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»-uKi\tLL   STUDIES    IN    PHILOSOPHY 

No.    I. 


Some  Problems 


OF 


Lotze's  Theory  of  Knowledge 


EDWIN   PROCTOR  :  ROBINS,  M.A. 

Late  Scholar  and  Fellmu  of  Cornell  University 


Edited  with  a  Biographical  Introduction 


J.  E.  CREIGHTON 


^ehj  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1900 


r'tm:. 


CORNELL   STUDIES    IN    PHILOSOPHY 


Some  Problems 


Lotze's  Theory  of  Knowledge 


EDWIN   PROCTOR  ROBINS,  M.A. 

Late  Scholar  and  Fellow  of  Cornell  University 


Edited  with  a  Biographical  Introduction 

BY 

J.  E.  CREIGHTON 


NEW   YORK 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

1900 


PRESS  OF 

Thb  New  Era  Printing  Company, 
Lancaster,  Pa. 


\v^W«v^^  ^\^,%SX 


INTRODUCTION. 


This  monograph  was  written  while  the  author  was  a  graduate 
student  at  Cornell  University,  and  was  intended  as  a  dissertation 
for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy.  Although  the  author 
had  intended  before  publishing  to  add  to  the  work  an  historical 
introduction  dealing  with  the  position  of  philosophy  in  Germany 
at  the  time  when  Lotze's  views  were  forming,  and  had-  collected 
some  material  for  this  purpose,  the  study  of  Lotze  which  he 
had  undertaken  was  in  all  essentials  complete  at  the  time  of  his 
death.  The  first  chapter  had  been  rewritten  and  revised,  and 
the  remaining  chapters,  although  lacking  the  author's  final  touch, 
would  not  probably  have  been  changed  greatly  either  in  form 
or  substance.  In  preparing  the  manuscript  for  the  press,  I  have 
made  no  changes  except  in  occasional  passages  where  the  ad- 
dition or  substitution  of  a  word  or  phrase  seemed  necessary 
in  order  to  render  the  meaning  clearer.  With  regard  to  the 
general  method  and  purpose  of  the  study  a  word  may  be  neces- 
sary. The  author  purposely  refrained  from  criticism  of  par- 
ticular passages  or  isolated  statements  in  the  system  with  which 
he  was  dealing.  The  aim  of  his  study  was  sympathetically  to 
interpret  the  spirit  of  Lotze's  system  as  a  whole — to  do  justice  to 
the  philosopher  by  taking  him  at  his  best  rather  than  to  exhibit 
the  literal  inconsistencies  of  his  system. 

Edward  Proctor  Robins  was  born  at  Central  Bedeque,  Prince 
Edward  Island,  July  2,  1872.  After  passing  through  the 
primary  and  grammar  schools  of  his  native  place,  he  entered 
Prince  of  Wales  College,  Charlottetown,  at  the  age  of  sixteen. 
In  the  fall  of  1891  he  matriculated  into  Dalhousie  College,  Hali- 
fax, N.  S.  Although  his  preparation  would  have  enabled  him 
to  enter  the  second  year  in  any  Canadian  college,  he  characteris- 
tically preferred  to  take  the  full  four  years'  course.  Besides 
philosophy,  to  which  he  devoted  special  attention  during  the  last 
two  years  of  his  collegiate  course,  mathematics,  physics,  botany, 


8S5449 


and  political  economy  were  the  subjects  which  specially  engaged 
his  attention.  He  received  the  degree  of  B.A.  from  Dalhousie 
College  in  1895,  and  after  another  year's  residence,  that  of  M.A. 
in  1896.  In  the  fall  of  the  latter  year  he  came  to  Cornell  Uni- 
versity and  for  three  years  carried  on  graduate  studies  in  philoso- 
phy and  psychology,  being  twice  elected  to  a  graduate  scholarship, 
and  at  the  time  of  his  death,  holding  a  fellowship  in  the  Sage 
School  of  Philosophy.  He  died  on  April  19,  1899,  after  an 
illness  of  three  days,  having  nearly  completed  his  twenty -seventh 
year. 

Besides  a  number  of  reports  on  periodical  literature  and  new 
books  contributed  from  time  to  time  to  the  Philosophical  Reviezv, 
Robins  published  in  the  same  journal  a  few  months  before  his 
death  an  important  article  entitled  "  Modern  Theories  of  Judg- 
ment," In  the  psychological  laboratory  he  had  taken  part  as 
subject  in  several  important  investigations,  and  was  for  some 
months  before  his  death,  himself  engaged  in  studying  complex 
taste-sensations,  working  especially  at  an  analysis  of  metallic 
and  alkaline  tastes  which  "have  a  '  burning  '  or  '  pricking  '  quality. 
From  reports  made  to  Professor  Titchener  it  is  certain  that 
his  investigation  yielded  important  results.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, these  can  not  be  published,  as  it  was  found  impossible 
to  fully  decipher  the  abbreviated  notes  in  which  the  records  of 
his  experiments  had  been  made. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  dwell  here  upon  the  intellectual 

promise  of   the  author,  or  to  attempt  any  appreciation  of  his 

personal  character.     Apart  from  the  importance  which  attaches 

to  this  monograph  as  a  contribution  to  the  history  of  philosophy, 

for  those  who  knew  Robins  personally  it  will   have  a  value  as  a 

memorial  of  the  man. 

J.  E.  C. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGR. 

Chapter  I. — Problem  and  Method 1-3 1 

Various  interpretations  of  Lotze,  pp.  1-8  ;  Lotze's 
Problem,  pp.  8-13;  Lotze's  Method,  pp.  13-23; 
Methodology  and  Truth,  pp.  23-31. 

Chapter  II. — The  Appearance  of  Reality 32-66 

Lotze  as  mediator  between  the  view  of  Kant 
and  that  of  Hegel  with  regard  to  Knowledge,  pp. 
32,  33  ;  Kant's  separation  of  phenomena  and  reality, 
pp.  33-36  ;  Hegel's  assertion  that  the  phenomenon 
is  reality,  pp.  36-42  ;  Lotze's  criticism  of  Kant,  pp. 
43-5  I  ;  Refutation  of  some  misunderstandings,  pp. 
51—54;  Lotze's  Criticism  of  the  Hegelian  Method, 
pp.  54-65  ;  Summary,  pp.  65,  66. 

Chapter    III. — Reality    and    Knowledge 67-108 

Lotze's  general  view  of  the  relation  of  Knowledge 
and  Reality,  pp.  67-71  ;  The  Nature  of  Reality,  pp. 
71-93  ;  The  relation  of  the  cognitive  subject  to 
Reality,  pp.  93-108. 


CHAPTER  I.      ■—  '■•  "•'  ^       -.'' 

PROBLEM    AND    METHOD.  '  '  ■      '>■'.'.''•.  ,  •'.   ]"■•: 

Introduction. 

LOTZE'S  many-sidedness  at  once  attracts  the  notice  of  the 
reader.  He  seems  to  represent  in  turn  almost  every 
system  of  philosophy,  and  also  to  deny  that  a  system  of  knowl- 
edge is  possible.  Many  scholars  know  Lotze  chiefly  as  a  realist, 
and  class  his  philosophy  with  the  anti-idealism  which  is  so  com- 
mon at  the  present  time.  From  this  point  of  view  he  is  attacked 
by  critics  who  regard  him  as  the  enemy  of  all  true  philosophy, 
and  his  realism  as  the  antithesis  of  sound  idealism.^  On  the 
other  hand  there  are  those  who  sympathize  with  Lotze,  and  agree 
that  all  knowledge  is  empirical ;  but  these  critics  are  not  satisfied 
because  he  does  not  renounce  entirely  the  philosophical  method.* 
Others  who  identify  his  idealism  with  an  abstract  monism  find  in 
Lotze  an  explicit  reaUsm  as  the  kernel  of  his  system,  and  main- 
tain that  any  attempt  to  formlilate  his  philosophy  idealistically  is 
wrong,  and  makes  Lotze  say  just  the  opposite  of  that  which  he 
intended  to  uphold.  According  to  this  interpretation,  Lotze  is  not 
a  monist  (idealist),  but  a  pluralist.^  A  fourth  class  of  thinkers  find 
in  Lotze  the  champion  of  the  heart  against  the  head,  and  regard  his 
philosophy  as  a  resolute  and  by  no  means  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  show  that  truth  is  broader  than  intellect,  and  that  human 
experience  is  as  extensive  as  man's  total  being,  and  is  not  limited 
to  the  function  of  understanding  or  reason  alone.  Even  Lotze's 
opponents  recognize  this  concession  to  feeling  and  will  as  ele- 
ments in  the  mind,  but  remark  sarcastically  that  now  theologians 
"  may  take  new  heart,"  for  this  theory  "  trusts  the  heart  against 
the  head."  *  Again  there  are  those  who  regard  Lotze  as  an 
idealist — they  claim  that  for  him  the  world  is  a  spiritual  unity, 

1  Cf.  Jones  :  Phil,  of  Lotze,  Preface. 

^ Kiilpe  :   Outlines  of  Psy.  (Eng.  trans.),  p.  26. 

3 Schiller:  Lotze's  Motiistn,  Phil.  Rev.,  V,  pp.  225-245. 

*  Jones:    Op.  cit.,  Pref.,  pp.  xi,  xii. 


2  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

and  that  all  individual  things  have  worth  and  value  only  in  rela- 
tion to  the  whole/;  '.Lastly,  Lotze  is  termed  by  some  a  mere 
ecl^ct'c,  who  gathered  together  a  great  many  different  points  of 
,Yi<-w,  biit- iV-as  not';  at»le  to  bring  them  into  a  unified  system.^ 
'  Thus  it  appears  that  the  interpretations  of  Lotze's  philosophy  are 
many.  At  one  time  he  is  called  a  realist,  at  another,  a  faith 
philosopher,  and  again  he  is  regarded  as  an  idealist,  or  even  a  mere 
eclectic.  Kronenberg  sums  up  the  various  criticisms  in  the  fol- 
lowing way  :  "  Our  philosopher  is  on  the  one  side  regarded  as 
an  Herbartian,  on  the  other  as  a  Leibnitzian,  or  even  as  a  fol- 
lower of  Spinoza.  Some  are  of  opinion  that  Lotze  is  a  speculative 
theist  or  the  restorer  of  ancient  rationalism,  others  assert  that 
he  is  simply  an  ordinary  eclectic."  ^  Whence  comes  this  diversity 
of  opinion,  and  how  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  of  so  many  inter- 
pretations of  Lotze's  philosophy  ? 

It  is  a  common  experience  that,  for  the  most  part,  we  find  what 
we  look  for,  and  do  not  observe  that  which  does  not  interest  us.^ 
This  is  no  doubt  one  reason  why  so  many  various  interpretations 
have  been  put  upon  Lotze's  philosophy.  But  the  personal  equa- 
tion present  in  every  investigation  will  not  explain  the  whole  fact, 
though  it  is  a  necessary  factor.  Besides  this  subjective  condition 
of  knowledge,  there  is  an  objective  basis  just  as  essential.^ 
Lotze's  philosophy  is  a  source  from  which  many  'can  draw. 
He  saw  the  many  sides  of  experience,  and  was  great  enough 
not  to  desire  the  reduction  of  the  manifold  nature  of  man 
to  one  aspect,  which  thereby  claims  to  become  the  basis 
and  explanatory  cause  of  the  others.''  Lotze  maintained  that 
experience  is  a  function  of  the  entire  man,  and  that  it  conse- 
quently possessed  many  attributes,  many  forms,  and  different 
criteria  of  value.  His  aim  was  to  describe  human  nature  as  he 
found  it,  and  to  allow  each  part  its  due.  To  this  end  he  weighed 
carefully  the  facts  on  all  sides,  and  desired  to  avoid  all  hasty  con- 

lyon  Hartmann  :  Lotze'' s  Phil.,  p.  66. 
2  Stahlin  :   Kant,  Lotze  und  Ritschl,   \  30. 
^  Moderne  Philosophen,  pp.  4-5. 
*  Metaphysik,  \  42. 

5  Mikrokosmos  (Eng.  trans.),  II,  pp.  322,  ff. 

6  Merz  :  Article,  "  Lotze  :"  Ency.  Brit.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  14. 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  3 

elusions.^     When  a  fact  cannot  be  analyzed  without  suffering  a 
loss  of  its  complete  nature,  Lotze  accepts  it  as  ultimate." 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  various  interpretations  to  which 
we  have  referred  have  some  warrant.  There  must  be  something 
in  Lotze's  philosophy  which  is  the  source  of  such  widespread  in- 
terest, and  of  the  material  for  so  many  different  constructions  of 
his  system.  At  first  sight  it  may  seem  that  he  has  given  only  a 
partial  analysis  of  a  wide  experience,  and  has  failed  to  reduce  it 
all  to  a  system.  In  this  way,  it  may  be  explained  why  Lotze  has 
attracted  so  many  and  satisfied  so  few.  He  has  touched  life 
lightly,  it  may  be  said,  but  at  many  points.  According  to  this 
view,  the  scope  of  Lotze's  philosophy  is  the  consequence  of  his 
unsystematic  eclecticism.  He  accepts  physical  law  and  yet  free- 
dom ;  he  enthrones  feeling  and  will  as  well  as  reason.  He  will 
not  give  up  the  utterances  of  experience,  and  there  is  nothing  so 
unimportant  as  to  deserve  no  attention,  or  to  be  silenced  with 
the  charge  of  inconsistency  with  reason.  Lotze  lets  pass  no  op- 
portunity to  reach  a  new  side  or  aspect  of  truth.  He  moves 
from  point  to  point  and  examines  reality  in  its  myriad  phases, 
and  in  its  wealth  of  detail.  His  interests  are  universal  and  his 
experience  comprehensive.  Along  with  the  definite  detail  of 
science  he  brings  the  richness  of  a  mature  religious  nature.^ 
This  is  the  source  of  his  comprehensive  philosophy. 

In  our  attempts  to  set  forth  a  part  of  this  philosophy,  it  ought 
to  be  remembered  that  it  is  not  our  purpose  to  maintain  that 
there  are  no  inconsistencies  in  Lotze's  doctrines.  Such  a  claim 
could  not  be  substantiated.  But  this  is  no  discredit  to  our 
author,  for  a  complete  system  of  experience  which  is  comprehen- 
sible through  and  through,  which  compels  conviction  and  leaves 
no  room  for  doubt,  has  not  yet  been  formulated,  and  there  seems 
to  be  little  likelihood  that  it  ever  will  be  formulated — at  any  rate 
not  till  all  the  facts  of  experience  are  in.  While,  however,  we 
make  no  such  pretensions  for  the  perfection  of  Lotze's  philosophy, 
it  will  be  our  endeavor  to  set  forth  as  plainly  as  possible  his  atti- 

»Cf.  Erdmann  :  Hist,  of  Phil.,  I  12,  347. 
2  Grundriss  der  Metaphysik,  \  92. 
^  Mikrokosmos,  II,  p.  727. 


4  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

tude  to  philosophy,  what  he  attempted  to  do  towards  the  solution 
of  the  logical  problem,  and  how  far  he  has  succeeded. 

For  the  student  of  Lotze  a  difficulty  soon  arises.  What  seemed 
at  first  clear  and  luminous  grows  obscure  and  perplexing,  and  we 
wonder  if  there  is  any  way  in  which  the  different  parts  can  be 
fitted  together  and  made  comprehensible  in  one  system.  As  we 
read  on  from  one  chapter  to  another,  and  from  one  book  to  an- 
other, the  efforts  we  have  made  by  the  way  to  gather  up  all  the 
threads  of  his  doctrine,  and  put  ourselves  at  his  point  of  view,  fail 
one  by  one,  and  we  complete  the  first  reading  of  his  works  thor- 
oughly bewildered.  It  must  indeed  be  admitted  that  Lotze  has 
not  given  us  a  complete  system  of  philosophy.  He  has  given  us 
an  attitude  and  a  method,  and  it  is  in  this  respect  that  we  will  at- 
tempt to  interpret  him.  Furthermore,  it  must  be  granted  that  if 
we  consider  only  the  outer  form  of  his  philosophy,  and  do  not 
seek  to  sympathetically  understand  his  meaning,  his  chapters  pre- 
sent a  puzzling  movement  of  contradictory  scenes  in  which  we 
may  labor  in  vain  to  find  unity.  For  example,  on  the  one  hand, 
an  uncompromising  monism  is  proclaimed  as  the  only  intelligible 
solution  of  the  nature  of' reality,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  decided 
a  dualism  seems  to  be  the  basis  of  his  logical  discussions.  His 
metaphysic  is  monistic  or  idealistic,  whereas  his  logic  appears  to  be 
dualistic  or  realistic.  This  antithesis  recurs  again  and  again,  and 
both  idealism  and  realism  are  in  turn  urgently  insisted  upon.  Stated 
in  this  unqualified  way,  Lotze's  philosophy  has  the  semblance  of 
mere  eclecticism.  But  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  this  interpre- 
tation expresses  his  meaning,  for  it  would  imply  that  he  was  in- 
attentive to  the  most  obvious  contradictions.  His  logical  doc- 
trine seems  to  admit  that  we  know  only  phenomena ;  but  had 
Lotze  meant  this  he  could  have  had  no  legitimate  right  to  discuss 
the  nature  of  reality.  It  seems  necessary,  therefore,  to  qualify 
these  statements  and  endeavor  to  comprehend  the  meaning  that 
Lotze  gives  them.  His  meaning  is  deeper  than  appears  on  the 
surface,  and  if  we  can  put  ourselves  at  his  point  of  view  many  of 
the  apparent  contradictions  will  vanish. 

Sympathetic  criticism  a  great  author  always  deserves.  When 
his  meaning  has  been  discovered,  a  more  searching  and  destruc- 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  5 

tive  criticism  is  valuable  and  necessary.  But  until  he  has  been 
interpreted,  until  it  has  been  made  plain  what  his  purpose  is,  and 
how  he  has  regarded  reality,  until  the  critic  has  put  himself  in 
the  place  of  the  author  and  has  beheld  reality  as  he  beholds  it, 
destructive  and  analytic  criticism  may  be  invaluable  in  construct- 
ing or  supporting  another  theory,  but  it  can  not  do  justice  to  the 
author.  Any  outline  of  philosophy  can  be  picked  to  pieces. 
Conceptions  can  be  pursued  to  their  logical  conclusions  and 
shown  to  contain  contradictions.  Such  a  logical  criticism  tends 
therefore  to  be  unfair. 

In  this  age,  indeed,  a  great  deal  is  said  about  '  consistency.' 
A  philosophy,  at  least,  must  be  consistent.  Every  one  grants  so 
much.  But  what  is  '  consistency,'  and  how  do  we  know  when  a 
system  is  consistent  ?  The  moment  we  inquire  into  the  meaning 
of  this  concept,  which  every  one  uses  so  readily,  it  becomes  evi- 
dent that  our  notions  of  '  consistency '  differ,  and  that  what  is 
really  made  the  criterion  of  truth  is  not  consistency,  but  our  in- 
dividual conception  of  what  consistency  is.  It  is  not  easy  to 
discover  the  true  nature  of  consistency,  and  careful  analyses  do 
not  seem  to  make  the  concept  intelligible.  Consistency  has 
been  defined  as  the  principle  of'  non-contradiction,'  or  '  the  incon- 
ceivability of  the  opposite.'  In  this  case,  to  be  sure,  the  criterion 
of  truth  is  logical  or  intellectual ;  intellect  decides,  and  intellect 
alone.  According  to  this  view,  feeling  and  emotion  are  disturb- 
ing elements  which  lead  to  biased  judgments.  If  now  consis- 
tency in  this  sense  of  the  term  is  made  the  test  of  truth,  it  will 
be  seen  that  it  does  not  work  to  complete  satisfaction.  One 
of  the  chief  characteristics  of  rational  knowledge  is  that  we  know 
hozv  an  event  occurs,  Jwiv  a  compound  is  formed  or  analyzed. 
This  '  how '  is  something  that  can  be  described  and  set  forth  in 
such  a  way  that  an  observer  can  repeat  it,  and  see  how,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  parts  go  together  to  compose  the  whole.  We  can 
see  how  5-1-4=9;  how  hydrogen  and  chlorine  form  hydro- 
chloric acid.  These  processes  and  their  results  can  be  shoivn  by 
analysis  and  synthesis.  But  so  soon  as  we  ask  the  further  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  we  can  understand  how  composition  or  unity 
is  possible,  we  must  admit  the  fact  we  know  ;  we  may  even  be 


6         LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

able  to  observe  the  parts  unite  together,  to  measure  their  rela- 
tive proportions,  and  understand  the  synthesis  to  this  extent. 
But  when  an  attempt  is  made  to  understand  how  parts  can  form 
a  unity,  or  how  a  can  be  b,  it  cannot  be  maintained  dogmatically 
that  this  unity  is  comprehensible  by  means  of  intellect  alone, 
though  it  is  plain  that  intellect  is  a  significant  function  in  knowl- 
edge. If,  then,  the  characteristic  mark  of  intellectual  knowledge 
is  that  the  subject  knows  Jiozv  a  result  is  produced,  or  liow  a  proc- 
ess occurs,  it  is  probable  that  an  intellectual  comprehension  of 
unity  in  difference  is  impossible.  Individual  opinion  may  differ 
widely  on  this  point ;  but  the  very  fact  that  there  is  a  difference 
of  opinion  shows  that  intellectual  consistency  alone  cannot  be 
regarded  as  the  sole  criterion  of  truth,  and  of  the  value  of  knowl- 
edge. Even  though  it  should  turn  out  in  the  end  to  be  the  ulti- 
mate test  of  all  that  is  comprehensible,  it  would  be  simply  an 
unwarranted  dogma  to  assume  that  all  knowledge  and  all  truth 
must  conform  to  this  one  touch-stone. 

It  seems  unfair,  therefore,  to  urge  to  its  logical  conclusions  cer- 
tain conceptions,  and  make  the  value  and  results  of  an  author's 
work  stand  or  fall  by  the  conclusions  reached  in  this  way.  This 
further  fact  also  must  be  borne  in  mind  when  a  criticism  of  any 
work  is  made.  Even  though  we  accept  the  dialectic  method,  and 
hold  that  all  concepts  must  be  organic,  and  that,  therefore,  if  any 
two  are  contradictory  one  or  both  must  be  false  ;  if,  I  say,  we  accept 
this  method,  the  critic  is  liable  to  fall  into  a  common  error,  in 
that  he  puts  his  own  consciousness  and  his  own  concepts  in  the 
place  of  those  of  the  author  whom  he  criticises.  When  a  critic 
examines  a  philosophical  work  and  finds  that  the  concepts  are 
not  organic  but  self-contradictory,  he  may  reach  either  one  of 
two  conclusions :  Either  that  the  writer's  work  is  actually  in- 
consistent, or  that  the  concepts  do  not  mean  for  the  critic  what 
they  mean  for  the  writer.  Now  the  latter  conclusion  is  not  likely 
to  be  drawn  ;  and  so  naturally  the  author  is  frequently  charged 
with  inconsistency  when  the  real  source  of  contradiction  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  critic  does  not  give  his  concepts  the  meaning 
which  the  authoi  intended  that  they  should  express.  Only  a 
small  part  of  one's  meaning  can  be  caught  and- expressed  in  lang- 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  J 

uagc  ;  therefore  it  is  incumbent  on  all  who  attempt  to  interpret 
an  author  to  get  behind  the  mere  words,  to  give  up  their  own 
particular  notions,  and  think  ivith  the  writer,  to  get  into  sympathy 
with  him,  and  grasp  the  underlying  conviction  which  he  has  en- 
deavored to  designate  by  concepts  in  discursive  statement.  If, 
indeed,  the  critic  can  discover  the  underlying  conviction,  he  will 
be  able  to  follow  the  thread  of  connection  running  through  the 
whole  system,  and  making  it  an  intelligible  (though  perhaps  not 
an  '  intellectual ')  unity.  If,  however,  he  misses  the  point  of  view, 
and  seeks  to  construct  it  by  an  inductive  synthesis,  reading  his 
own  private  notions  into  the  categories,  and  coloring  them  all 
with  his  own  individuality,  it  is  patent  that  he  will  discover  con- 
tradictions everywhere. 

The  point  to  be  emphasized  is,  that  the  philosopher  has  an 
attitude,  and  that,  to  interpret  him,  it  is  necessary  to  get  into  his 
attitude.  It  is  hard  to  realize  that  much  of  a  man's  philosophy 
is  his  attitude,  so  accustomed  are  we  to  the  objectivity  of  natural 
science.  In  science  where  simple  objects  are  before  us,  and  where 
the  problem  is  to  count,  measure,  or  weigh  them,  it  is  compara- 
tively easy  to  treat  them  in  an  almost  purely  objective  way.  The 
object  is  simple,  and  appears  to  every  one  in  nearly  the  same  way, 
though  even  here  we  reach  a  limit  where  uniformity  ceases,  and 
individuality  shapes  the  results.  This  individuality,  however,  here 
enters  only  in  a  small  way,  and  for  all  practical  purposes  little 
differences  can  be  overlooked,  and  all  phenomena  taken  as  uniform. 
Where  the  descriptions  are  easy  every  one  agrees  to  them,  and 
their  objectivity  is  obvious.  But  whenever  we  are  dealing  with 
the  personal  experience  of  an  individual  thinker  it  is  obvious  that 
no  such  uniformity  exists,  and,  indeed,  there  is  not  the  same  means 
of  compelling  assent.  The  difference,  we  believe,  is  only  in  de- 
gree, nevertheless  there  is  a  difference,  and  to  recognize  this  is  all 
that  is  demanded. 

As  has  now  been  shown,  knowledge  has  a  personal  equation  : 
a  man's  philosophy  depends  largely  on  the  kind  of  man  he  is.^ 
In  other  words,  much  of  our  knowledge  is  a  personal  possession 
which  is  not  objective,  and  cannot  be  objectfied  or  communicated 
to  another.^     That  other  may  be  able,  if  he  is  a  sympathetic 

1  Cf.  Fichte,  J.  G.,  Werke,  I,  p.  434.  iMikr.,  II,  pp.  622,  623. 


8  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

critic,  to  reconstruct  this  knowledge  in  his  own  experience,  and 
in  this  way  become  an  interpreter.  This  he  can  accomphsh, 
however,  only  if  he  beholds  things  from  the  same  standpoint  as 
the  writer.  Should  he,  indeed,  be  unsympathetic,  and  possess  a 
conception  of  reality  different  from  that  of  the  author,  then  it  is 
impossible  for  him  to  be  an  interpreter.  Moreover,  he  is  almost 
certain  to  observe  nothing  but  contradictions ;  for  he  reads  into 
the  terms  conceptions  of  his  own  which  they  will  not  bear. 
Philosophic  knowledge  is  not  simple  enough  to  be  spread  out  in 
objective  perception,  or  to  be  expressed  adequately  in  the  intui- 
tive forms  of  any  sense  department  where  direct  perception  is 
sufficient  to  compel  agreement.  On  the  contrary,  this  knowledge 
is  complex,  and  refuses  to  be  expressed  in  sensuous  forms ;  and 
though  it  cannot  be  presented  to  the  eye  or  the  ear,  it  has  a  con- 
tent and  a  meaning  which  we  can  appreciate,  though  it  cannot 
be  firmly  grasped  in  the  ordinary  categories  of  science.  This 
knowledge  is  the  individual's  interpretation  of  the  infinite  and 
boundless  reality  with  which  he  is  in  contact.  What  he  knows 
does  not  exhaust  the  wealth  of  reality.  It  is  only  a  fragment  of 
what  can  be  known ;  but  it  is  the  part  he  has  selected,  and 
elaborated  into  an  experience  which  is  comprehensible  for  him. 
He  has  given  this  particular  interpretation  of  reality  because  he  was 
of  such  a  nature,  and  stood  in  such  a  relation  to  reality,  because 
it  was  this  aspect  of  reality  which  interested  him,  and  satisfied 
him.  We  may  therefore  conclude  that  the  further  the  so-called 
world  of  sense  is  removed  from  our  knowledge,  the  more  the 
personal  equation  gives  tone  and  color  to  the  entire  construction. 

Our  problem,  therefore,  will  be  to  attempt  to  discover  Lotze's 
meaning,  and  to  appreciate  what  he  tried  to  do.^  Accordingly, 
this  chapter  will  be  a  discussion  of  his  problem  and  his  method  ; 
and  first  we  will  take  up  his  problem. 

I.  Lotze's  problem  is  to  reconcile  oppositions,  or  to  mediate 
between  contrary  opinions.  It  is  a  synthetic  reconstruction 
of  philosophy,  which  will  take  account  of  all  departments  of 
knowledge.  What  President  Schurman  says  of  Kant  is  true  of 
Lotze  :  "Kant  had  a  primitive  bent  towards  mediation.  His 
iCf.  Mikr.  (Eng.  trans.),  II,  p.  576. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  9 

nature  led  him  to  compose  intellectual  differences  by  mutual  con- 
cessions. His  method  was  to  recede  somewhat  from  the  rigorous 
and  exclusive  claims  of  either  side  in  order  to  adopt  the  truth  per- 
taining to  both  sides.  .  .  .  There  was  in  Kant  an  instinctive  ten- 
dency to  adjudicate  all  disputes  without  rejecting  the  claims  of 
rival  contestants."  '  Mediation  is  the  form  philosophy  took  in 
Lotze's  time,  and  Lotze  was  only  one  among  many  who  at- 
tempted a  reconstruction  of  truth.  After  Hegel's  death  a  disso- 
lution of  his  school  occurred.  The  attacks  upon  Hegel  were 
vital  and  were  aimed  at  the  very  heart  of  his  system.  Accor- 
dingly, dissolution  occurj^ed  in  all  parts  of  his  philosophy,  viz., 
logic,  ethics,  politics,  and  the  philosophy  of  religion.^  There 
was  only  one  course  open,  and  this  was  a  reconstruction,  and  the 
strength  of  this  new  attitude  is  based  upon  two  factors,  says 
Kronenberg.  These  factors  are  :  "  The  enormous  development 
of  empirical  inquiry,  especially  in  the  provinces  of  the  natural 
sciences,  and  in  a  negative  factor,  the  dissolution  and  the  disinte- 
gration of  the  Hegelian  school."^  According  to  Erdmann,  this 
reconstruction  took  four  forms.  The  first  was  a  philosophy  of  res- 
toration, a  return  to  earlier  systems,^  while  the  second  aimed  at  in- 
novation. The  members  of  the  latter  school  desired  to  be  original; 
but  they  too  were  really  restorationists,  for  they  produced  nothing 
new.  Some  of  them,  says  Erdmann,  "  had  so  little  acquaintance 
with  philosophy  that  they  offered  as  new  wisdom  doctrines  which 
had  long  ago  been  rejected."^  "  A  third  case,  and  one  which 
would  .occupy  an  intermediate  position  between  these  two  at- 
tempts at  repristination  and  these  other  attempts  at  giving  a  new 
form  to  philosophy,  would  occur,  if  one  or  several  of  the  systems 
hitherto  considered  were  to  be  taken  as  a  starting  point  and  fur- 
ther developed."  ^  This  third  form  of  reconstruction  is  a  devel- 
opment of  earlier  systems  or  of  an  earlier  system.  Erdmann 
classifies     this    third     form     into    two     groups  :     Those      who 

1  TJie  Critical  Philosophy,  Phil.  Rev.,  VII,  I,  pp.  5,  6.' 

2  Erdmann:  op.   «V.,  ^?  332-342. 
'^  Mode  me  Philosophen,  p.  12. 

*  Erdmann  :   op.  cii.,  §  344. 

-Op.  cil.,?ii^Sy^^^ 
^Ibid.,  §343,  2. 


lO  LOTZE'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

started  either  from  one  single  system,  or  from  a  study  of  many 
systems/  and  those  who  also  endeavored  to  mediate  between 
natural  science  and  speculation.'  To  this  latter  class  belongs 
Lotze.  The  fourth  case  is  a  retreat  from  philosophical  systems  to 
a  study  of  the  history  of  philosophy.  It  is  the  third  form  alone,  to 
which  Lotze  belongs,  which  can  lay  claim  to  real  originality  ;  for 
it  alone  is  truly  a  reco7istruction  of  former  theories.  This  recon- 
struction is  at  the  same  time  a  mediation.  Lotze  endeavors 
to  combine  the  truth  in  the  various  theories  of  philosophy 
with  the  method  of  the  natural  sciences.  This  was  a  vital  problem 
for  Lotze,  who  was  trained  in  the  two  schools  of  philosophy  and 
science.  He  was  also  a  student  of  literature  and  art,  and  brought 
a  well-trained  mind  and  a  high  degree  of  culture  to  the  solution 
of  philosophical  problems. 

The  tendency  of  Lotze's  thinking  is  "to  oppose  hasty  dogma- 
tizing."^ One  form  of  the  reconciliation  is  that  between  science 
and  faith.  "  It  is  true  that  the  imperfection  of  human  knowledge 
may  compel  us,  when  we  have  used  our  utmost  endeavors,  to 
confess  that  we  cannot  build  up  the  results  of  cognition  and 
faith  so  as  to  form  a  complete  and  perfect  structure  ;  but  we  can 
never  look  on  indifferently  when  we  see  cognition  undermining 
the  foundations  of  faith,  or  faith  calmly  putting  aside  as  a  whole 
that  which  scientific  zeal  has  built  up  in  detail.  On  the  contrary, 
we  must  be  ever  conscious  of  endeavoring  to  maintain  the  rights 
of  each,  and  to  show  how  far  from  insoluble  is  the  contradiction 
in  which  they  appear  to  be  inextricably  involved."*  Now  what  is 
true  of  the  relation  of  man's  spiritual  needs  to  the  results  of 
science,  is  true  of  every  department  of  Lotze's  philosophy.  He 
mediates  between  the  creation  conception  of  the  origin  of  the 
world  and  the  conception  of  development.  For  Lotze,  God  is 
not  a  Dais  ex  machlna  who  declares  his  will  in  miracles.  On 
the  contrary,  he  manifests  himself  in  the  laws  of  nature.^  This 
leads  to  the  mediation  between  mechanism  and  teleology.     God 

1  Op.  cit.,  I  346,  I. 
iJbid.,  §347,  9- 

^  Mikr.,  I,  Introd.,  p.  xi.;   cf.  also  Kronenberg  :  op.  cit.,  pp.  19-21  ;  Jones  :  op. 
cit.,  ch.  I;  Lindsay:  Hermann  Lotze  :  Mind,  1S76,  p.  369. 
^Mikr.,  II,  p.  128. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  II 

works  in  nature.  The  telic  purpose  of  the  universe  operates  by 
means  of  a  mechanical  system.  Teleology  has  a  modus  operandi. 
Therefore  pure  mechanism  is  an  abstraction,  and  not  an  ultimate 
or  metaphysical  category.'  But  teleology  alone  is  equally  an 
abstraction  and  only  a  methodological  conception,  or  HUfsbegriff 
which  enables  us  to  group  certain  aspects  of  reality  under  a  defi- 
nite rubric.'  Both  concepts  are  limited,  and  both  imply  one  an- 
other. Mechanism  is  therefore  no  power  controlling  reality,  but 
rather  the  way  in  which  a  purposeful  reality  realizes  itself.^  Again 
we  find  the  same  philosophical  problem  in  Lotze's  discussion  of 
monism  and  pluralism.  An  absolute  monism  would  contradict 
experience,  which  asserts  a  many,  and  also  change.  On  the  other 
hand,  pluralism  is  not  ultimate  ;  for  experience  testifies  to  the 
unity  of  reality.  Furthermore,  neither  of  these  concepts  can 
logically  stand  alone.  Each  implies  the  other.  Unity  has  no 
meaning  without  plurality,  and  plurality  has  no  meaning  apart 
from  unity.  The  real,  Lotze  therefore  concludes,  is  one  and 
many,  it  is  a  unity  of  differences.  Once  more,  this  tendency  to 
mediate  between  extremes  is  found  not  only  in  the  critique  of 
these  higher  categories,  but  is  present  throughout  all  Lotze's 
work.*  He  breaks  down  the  abstract  distinction  between  physics 
and  physiology,  or  between  the  inorganic^  and  the  organic  ;  also 
the  distinction  between  plants  and  animals  f  and  body  and  mind.^ 
There  is  still  another  and  very  important  case  in  which  this 
method  is  exemplified.  Lotze  has  acted  the  part  of  mediator 
with  regard  to  the  notions  of  appearance  and  reality.  Since 
Kant's  time  these  concepts  have  been  of  vital  importance  for  a 
theory  of  knowledge.  Appearance  and  reality  were  so  regarded 
that  a  sharp  dualism  arose  between  the  two,  with  the  result  that 
appearance  is  known  and  reality  unknown.  A  little  later  the 
attempt  to  know  a  reality  behind  appearance  was  renounced, 
and  appearance  and  reality  were  identified,  and  thus,  of  course, 

'^Met.,  \  269. 
^Ibid.,  I  92. 

^  Alikr.,  II,  pp.  620  f;   Logic,  7^1  I47  ff. 

^  Met.,  \\  68-81  ;    Grundriss  der  Religionsphil,  §  21  ;  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  594-599- 

^  Mikr.,  Bk.  I,  Chs.  II,-IV;  Allgetneine  Pathologie,  Bk.  I. 

s  Medicinische  Psychologie,  \\  II-15. 

•^  Med.  Psy.,  ?i?i  6-10;  Mikr.,  Bk.,  III. 


12  LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

reality  is  known  Avlien  appearance  is  known.  Lotze,  however, 
does  not  accept  either  of  these  extreme  theories,  but  adopts  a  posi- 
tion which  preserves  the  truth  in  both. 

Not  only  do  Lotze's  sympathetic  interpreters  admit  that  medi- 
ation plays  an  important  role  in  his  philosophic  thinking,  and 
commend  him  for  this  method,  but  his  opponents  equally  observe 
how  large  a  part  this  method  has  in  shaping  his  philosophy. 
This  method  is  plainly  acknowledged,  for  example,  by  Jones  ^  and 
Lange.  The  latter  extols  Lotze  for  the  distinct  service  he  has 
rendered  to  science  in  clearing  up  the  problem,  and  in  providing 
a  method,  while  condemning  him  for  what  Lange  considers  a 
return  to  superstition."  In  another  reference  to  Lotze,  Lange 
says  :  "  An  example  of  such  a  scientific  police  was  furnished 
some  years  ago  by  Lotze  in  his  polemic  against  the  anthropol- 
ogy of  the  younger  Fichte.  He  made  only  one  mistake,  that 
after  he  had  scientifically  quite  defeated  him  he  proposed  to 
shake  hands  and  exchange  gifts  like  the  Homeric  heroes."^ 

There  are  still  a  few  points  concerning  mediation  which  we 
need  to  notice  before  closing  this  section.  Mediation  is  not  a 
mechanical  adjudication  by  means  of  which  an  arithmetic  mean 
is  obtained,  through  each  side  "  yielding  a  little  alternatively," 
but  it  is  a  reinterpretation  of  the  facts,  a  rethinking  of  them  in 
new  concepts.  It  is  plainly  a  fresh  elaboration  of  the  facts  of 
experience,  and  in  this  respect  it  differs  from  an  eclecticism.  In 
the  second  place,  mediation  does  not  remove  all  differences,  and 
unite  opposite  theories  and  facts  on  the  dead-level  of  bare  identity  ; 
but  it  takes  note  of  differences,  and  seeks  to  emphasize  them  to 
their  full  value.  Lotze  is  always  opposed  to  hasty  generaliza- 
tion, and  regards  it  as  no  advance  when  unity  is  won  at  the  loss 
of  content.  Wherever  the  unity  underlying  two  different  con- 
tents is  not  clearly  known,  Lotze  regards  a  generalization  un- 
warranted, and  prefers  to  designate  each  content  by  its  own  concept. 
As  will  be  seen  below,  he  regards  such  contents  as  methodologic- 
ally distinct,  though  he  admits  that  ultimately  they  form  a  unity 
in  a  way  which  at  present  is  not  understood.      But  in  this  prin- 

1  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  I. 

2Cf.  Hist  of  Materialism  (Eng.  Trans.),  Vol.  II,  p.  285. 

^  Ibid.,  II,  p.  347. 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  1 3 

ciple  of  mediation  it  is  niaiiitainoJ  that  these  opposite  contents  are 
not  dualistically  opposed,  and  are  not  incompatible.  With  this 
notion  the  metaphysical  problem  is  solved,  and  the  remaining 
task  devolves  upon  one  or  other  of  the  special  sciences  to  show 
in  detail  how  the  mediation  is  accomplished.  Thirdly,  the 
request  that  philosophy  explain  Junv  the  general  concepts  are 
formed,  and  how  reality  exists  as  it  does  exist  is  far  too  great  a 
demand.  Because  we  can  maintain  that  reality  is  a  unity  in  dif- 
ference, it  does  not  follow  that  an  explanation  of  hozv  this  is  so 
can  be  given.  Knowledge  is  broader  than  intellectual  explana- 
tion. Many  things  are  known  where  an  explanation  of  them  is 
not  forthcoming.  INIediation  in  Lotze's  hands  is  rather  an  insis- 
tence on  the  facts  wherever  they  are  found.  It  holds  to  them  in 
the  hope  that  further  reflection  will  display  their  interdependence. 
Meanwhile  it  tones  down  opposing  theories  by  regarding  them  as 
human  formulations  of  certain  bodies  of  facts,  or  as  Hilfshy- 
pothesen  ;  and  by  giving,  wherever  possible,  a  reinterpretation,  so 
that  the  truth  on  both  sides  is  retained,  and  both  explained. 
The  philosopher  must  not  be  over-enthusiastic  for  the  great 
things,  and  regardless  of  the  small.  Each  has  its  worth  in  the 
unity  of  things  and  it  should  be  treated  as  it  deserves.^  No 
theory  therefore  has  any  right  to  tyrannize  over  the  facts,  and 
"any  scientific  hypothesis  that  offends  our  deeper  instincts  is  ipso 
facto  disproved,  and  classed  among  those  materialistic  theories 
that  far  outrun  possible  experience."^ 

II.  Lotze's  method  is  the  key  to  all  his  philosophy.  Philos- 
ophy, he  maintains,  is  •.  not  a  deductive  science,  and  knowledge 
cannot  be  deduced  a  priori  from  any  general  principle.  Not 
only  can  knowledge  in  its  detail  not  be  deduced,  but  not  even  an 
outline  can  be  given  a  priori.  "■  One  view,  however,  believes  that 
it  is  both  able  and  obliged  to  divine  at  the  beginning  the  One 
Real  Principle,  on  which  the  world  actually  depends,  and  from  it 
to  deduce  or  construe  the  entire  actuality  as  the  sum  of  its  con- 
sequences. Such  a  beginning  for  cognition  would  be  the  best  if 
we  were  gods.     On  the  contrary,  as  finite  beings,  we  do  not  our- 

^Mikr.,  II,  p.  728: 

*Santayana:  Lche s  Moral  Idealism:    Mind,  Vol.  XV  (1S90),  p.  191. 


14        LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

selves  stand  in  the  creative  center  of  the  world,  but  eccentrically 
in  the  hurly-burly  of  its  individual  sequences.  It  is  not  at  all 
probable,  and  is  never  certain,  that  we  should  perfectly  divine  the 
one  true  principle  of  the  world  in  any  one  fundamental  thought, 
however  noble  and  important,  to  which  some  sudden  intuition 
might  lead  us  ;  still  more  uncertain  that  we  should  formally 
apprehend  it  so  accurately  that  the  series  of  its  true  consequences 
should  obviously  proceed  from  it.  It  is  rather  altogether  prob- 
able that  the  first  expression  of  the  principle  will  be  defective, 
and  that  mistakes  will  always  multiply  in  the  course  of  the  deduc- 
tion ;  since  one  has  regard  to  no  independent  point  of  view  from 
which  they  might  be  corrected."  ^ 

The  deductive  method  is  of  value  for  the  exhibitioii  of  a  truth 
already  possessed.  But  since  it  can  only  exhibit  truth,  it  is  not 
a  suitable  method  for  the  discovery  of  truth  and  the  compre- 
hension of  reality.  Man's  business  is  the  search  for  truth,  and 
his  method  must  be  able  to  aid  him  in  its  discovery.  Man  is 
only  an  atom  in  the  vast  universe,  and  it  is  idle  for  him  to 
endeavor  to  grasp  the  complete  truth  of  the  universe  from  which 
he  can  deduce  all  secondary  truth. ^  Man's  importance  has  been 
overestimated.  He  still  bears  too  much  of  the  celestial  dignity 
with  which  the  illumination  has  crowned  him.  Man  may  be 
made  in  the  likeness  of  God,  but  he  is  not  a  deity,  and  he  has 
no  right  to  claim  omniscience.  Instead  of  residing  in  the  center 
of  things  from  which  he  can  see  reality  in  its  completeness,  he 
exists  on  the  periphery  of  being,  and  has  only  a  little  knowledge, 
and  this  is  relative  to  his  station,  and  has  been  acquired  grad- 
ually.^ If  God  is  truth,  it  is,  on  the  other  hand,  man's  duty 
to  attain  truth.  Consequently  "the  mere  search  for  truth  is  by 
no  means  under  the  necessity  of  taking  its  point  of  departure 
from  one  principle,  but  is  justified  in  setting  forth  from  many 
points  of  attachment  that  lie  near  each  other.  It  is  only  bound 
to  the  laws  of  thought — beyond  that,  to  no  so-called  '  method  ' 
whatever."^ 

^Encyk.  d.  Phil.,  §  3. 

^Mikr.,  II,  p.  141. 

^  Logik.,  Introd.,  \  ix. 

^Ettcyk.  d.  Phil.,  \  3;  Mikr.^\\,  pp.  714,  715. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  15 

Furthermore,  deduction  is  a  purely  intellectual  method,  and 
bases  every  step  in  the  process  upon  pure  concepts.  If  complete 
knowledge  deifies  man,  the  deductive  method  of  philosophy 
deifies  intellect.  This  deification  of  reason  is  the  heritage  we 
have  received  from  the  French  and  German  Illumination.  The 
supremacy  of  intellect  is  expressed  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  his 
famous  aphorism  :  "In  the  world  there  is  nothing  great  but  man. 
In  man  there  is  nothing  great  but  mind."  This  conception  of 
man  makes  intellect  sovereign,  and  the  rest  of  his  nature  a  slave. 
Feeling,  emotion,  and  desire  have  no  rights.  As  Kant  states  it, 
they  have  only  duties  to  reason.  Feeling  must  always  give  way 
to  intellect ;  emotion  is  a  form  of  feeling  which  is  very  disturb- 
ing and  threatens  the  supremacy  of  reason  :  It  is  simply  a  rash, 
and  rank  growth  of  feeling.^  This  method  endeavors  to  rationalize 
everything,  to  express  all  experience  in  terms  of  intellect,  and 
what  does  not  conform  to  this  criterion  is  erroneous.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  it  is  a  point  of  view  against  which  Lotze  wages  an 
incessant  polemic.  "  It  is  by  Lotze  chiefly  that  the  overestima- 
tion  of  knowledge  has  been  demolished,  a  notion  which  has 
haunted  our  conceptions  of  life  from  Plato  to  Hegel.  In  theo- 
retical thought,  indeed,  Lotze  refers  to  the  elements  of  belief  in 
immediate  experiences,  which  lie  in  the  ultimate  axioms,  and  con- 
sequently he  shows  the  deeper  significance  which  belongs  to  be- 
lief in  the  unity  of  the  soul.""  So  far  from  being  able  to  deduce 
all  reality  in  concepts  from  one  universal  principle,  thought  alone 
is  not  able  to  comprehend  many  of  the  ordinary  facts  of  expe- 
rience. Becoming  is  a  puzzle  for  thought,  so  also  are  causation, 
existence,  unity,  etc.^  Reality  can  be  understood  only  by  living 
it  in  every  part  of  our  being,  and  not  by  thought  only.  Could 
it  be  understood  by  thought,  and  unfolded  from  one  principle  as 
concepts  can  be  analyzed  from  a  judgment,  then  reality  would 
be  thought.  But  "  the  nature  of  things  does  not  consist  in 
thoughts,  and  ....  thinking  is  not  able  to  grasp  it.  .  ,  .  It 
was  a  long  time  before  living  -fancy  recognized  in  thought  the 
bridle  which  guides  the  course,  steadily,  surely,  and  truly ;  per- 

iKant :    IVerke  (Hartenstein's  Ed.),  Vol.  VII,  pp.  571  fif. 
2  Vorbrodt :   Principieit  d.  Ethik,  p.  9. 
M///Jr.,  II,  pp.  353-355. 


1 6  LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

haps  it  will  be  as  long  again  before  men'  see  that  the  bridle  can- 
not originate  the  motion  which  it  should  guide. "^  Man,  however, 
is  more  than  intellect.  He  is  feeling,  will,  emotion,  as  well.  He 
is  a  spirit  with  its  complex  life,  and  logic  is  not  sufficient  to  ex- 
plain him,  or  the  world  to  which  he  belongs.  "  Reality  is  in- 
finitely richer  than  thought."^  Since  reality  is  of  this  spiritual 
nature  "the  like  over-estimate  of  logical  principles,  the  habit  of 
regarding  them  as  limitations  of  what  is  really  possible,  would 
oblige  us  to  treat  as  inadmissible  the  most  important  assumptions 
on  which  our  conception  of  the  world  is  founded."^  From  these 
and  other  considerations  Lotze  concludes  that  the  method  of 
philosophy  is  not  a  priori  deduction. 

Lotze's  criticism  of  the  method  of  a  priori  deduction  has 
been  misunderstood.  It  has  been  regarded  as  a  hostile  attack  on 
idealism,  and  this  notion  has  gained  ground  largely,  I  believe, 
from  the  circumstance  that  his  philosophy  has  been  called  a 
realism.  This  criticism,  however,  is  not  well  founded,  and  is 
based  upon  a  misunderstanding  of  his  use  of  terms,  and  of  his 
method,  in  that  his  method  has  been  confused  with  his  general 
view  of  the  world.  An  example  of  this  kind  of  criticism  is  seen 
in  the  following  passage  :  "  Lotze's  opposition  to  Idealism  was 
not  based  so  much  on  his  antagonism  to  its  positive  doctrines,  as 
upon  his  antipathy  to  its  system.  To  the  essentially  critical  spirit 
of  Lotze  a  system  .  .  .  seems  to  tyrannize  over  its  component 
parts  .  .  .  His  philosophy  is  a  persistent  defence  of  perception 
against  reflection,  of  the  concrete  particular  against  pale  and  vacant 
general  ideas."*  The  point  of  this  criticism  is  :  '  Because  idealism 
is  a  system,  and  because  a  system  tyrannizes  over  its  parts,  Lotze 
rejects  ideahsm.'  That  this  is  false  will  be  seen  later.  But  we 
may  say  here  that  Lotze  does  not  object  to  idealism  ;  he  is  well 
aware  that  reality  is  a  system,  and  regards  this  as  its  merit : 
further,  he  would  say  that  reality  as  a  system  does  not  tyrannize 
over  its  parts.  Nevertheless,  he  does  maintain  that  the  ideahsm 
of  the  schools,  since  it  is  a  system,  does  tyrannize  over  the 
parts.  Let  us  now  endeavor  to  discover  what  Lotze  means,  and 
wherein  the  criticism  fails. 

^Mikr.,  II,  pp.  559,  560;   Met.,  §  93.  ^  Ibid.,  §  77. 

•^Met.,  §  76;  Cf.  also  ^  83,  88.  *  Jones  :  op.  cit.,  p.  9.- 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  1/ 

Lotze's  denial  of  the  a  priori  method  is  only  a  modest  confes- 
sion that  man  is  not  omniscient,  and  must  renounce  all  claims  to 
divine  knowledge.  It  is  only  a  confession  of  limited  knowledge, 
and  not  a  profession  of  skepticism  ;  nor  docs  it  sound  the  knell  of 
idealism  as  has  been  asserted.  Lotze's  position  is  put  strongly  in 
the  following  passage  :  "  Only  a  mind  which  stood  at  the  center  of 
the  real  world,  not  outside  individual  things,  but  penetrating  them 
with  its  presence,  could  command  such  a  view  of  reality  as  left 
nothing  to  look  for,  and  was  therefore  the  perfect  image  of  it  in 
its  own  being  and  activity.  But  the  human  mind,  with  which 
alone  we  are  here  concerned,  does  not  thus  stand  at  the  center 
of  things,  but  has  a  modest  position  somewhere  in  the  extreme 
ramifications  of  reality."^  The  difference  between  an  omniscient 
mind  and  the  human  consciousness  is  that  the  knowledge  of  the 
former  is  all-inclusive,  and  beholds  things  from  the  center, 
whereas  the  knowledge  of  the  latter  is  fragmentary  (partially-in- 
clusive), and  beholds  things  from  the  periphery.  Complete  and 
partial  knowledge,  however,  do  not  differ  radically,  though  they 
differ  in  degree  of  perfection,  and  in  degree  of  unity.  They  are 
more  or  less  alike  in  structure  and  content,  and  possess  the  same 
purpose.  What  Lotze  says,  therefore,  is  that  human  knoivledgc 
about  reality  is  incomplete  and  fragmentary  :  that  this  knowledge 
cannot  be  deduced  from  a  general  principle,  for  this  would  imply  the 
complete  knowledge  which  is  desired.  Further,  the  philosophical 
system  which  desires  to  grasp  first  of  all  the  ultimate  principle  of 
the  universe,  and  grasp  it  completely,  and  then  unfold  out  of  it 
all  knowledge,  makes  pretences  for  human  cognition  which  there 
is  no  warrant  to  allow.  Lotze  only  denies  that  there  is  an  a 
priori  deduction  of  knowledge  from  a  general  principle,  that 
human  knowledge  is  complete,  and  a  system.  Never  does  he 
deny  or  even  doubt  the  validity  of  knowledge.  He  is  not 
skeptical.  He  believes  in  the  attainability  of  knowledge.  Again, 
Lotze  in  his  reflections  on  the  limitations  of  human  knowledge 
does  not  say  a  word  about  reality.  That  knowledge  is  incom- 
plete does  not  imply  that  reality  is  incomplete.  In  all  these  dis- 
cussions about  the  limitations  of  knowledge,  we  must  ever  bear 

^  Logik,  Introd.,  §  IX. 


1 8  LOTZKS   THEORY  OF  KAOWLEDGE. 

in  mind  that  Lotze  has  reference  to  knowledge  and  knowledge 
only.      He  is  not  discussing  reality. 

With  this  conception  of  the  nature  of  Lotze's  problem,  let  us 
return  to  the  objection  mentioned  above.  It  was  said  that  Lotze 
rejects  idealism  on  account  of  the  tyranny  of  its  system.  This 
criticism  is  guilty  of  a  confusion.  It  confuses  knowledge  and  re- 
ality. It  makes  a  system  of  knoivledge  identical  with  a  system  of 
reality.  If,  however,  these  two  concepts  are  regarded  inter- 
changeably, Lotze  deserves  the  above  criticism  ;  for  he  denies, 
as  has  been  shown,  that  our  knowledge  is  a  system.  It  does  not 
all  hang  on  one  complete  and  all-including  major  premise  which 
contains  in  itself  all  that  we  know  or  can  possibly  know.  Ac- 
cording to  this  criticism,  our  knowledge  is  not  a  system,  reality 
is  knowledge,  therefore  reality  is  not  a  system,  or  a  unity.  Thus 
it  is  concluded  that  Lotze's  conception  of  reality  is  a  plural- 
ism, and  not  idealism.  If,  however,  the  distinction  between 
a  system  of  reality  or  idealism,  and  a  system  of  knowledge  is 
maintained,  then  this  objection  is  answered.  Lotze  may  very  well 
deny  that  we  possess  a  system  of,  knowledge,  and  at  the  same 
time  hold  that  reality  is  a  unity,  and  ideal.  Now  just  this  is 
Lotze's  position.  Knowledge  is  not  a  system,  but  reality  is  a 
system.  Ontologically  the  world  is  a  single  spiritual  being ; 
and  if  it  could  be  known  completely,  this  unity  would  be 
known,  and  the  function  of  every  part  fully  comprehended.^ 
But  such  complete  knowledge  no  human  being  has,  and,  conse- 
quently, there  is  no  system  of  knowledge  about  reality.  When, 
however,  knowledge  is  taken  to  be  a  system,  and  the  parts  of 
experience  forcibly  fitted  into  its  categories,  the  system  does 
tyrannize  over  the  parts.  The  system  of  knowledge  is  the  tyranny; 
but  reality,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  system.  This  conception  of 
knowledge  as  fragmentary,  and  its  relation  to  reality  which  is  a 
system,  is  clearly  stated  by  Hobhouse  :  "  Broadly  we  may  say 
that  the  function  of  thought  in  inference  is  to  connect  the  given 
with  the  result  of  extending  its  knowledge  over  the  wider  reality 
which  is  not  given.  In  the  act  of  inference  thought  takes  the  actual 
relation  as  also  a  necessary  relation,  and  as  a  fragment  of  neces- 

1  Logik,  I  300. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  1 9 

sary  relations.  In  this  mode  of  functioning,  thought  has  no  system 
ready  made,  no  criterion  of  necessity  lying  at  hand  to  apply.  It 
learns  the  concrete  character  of  the  system  from  the  facts  them- 
selves, and  hence  by  slow  and  laborious  degrees  with  constant 
mistakes.  Its  only  postulate  is  that  there  is  a  system  ;  there  are 
relations  which  are  necessary.  What  the  system  is  it  must  find 
out  from  the  facts  themselves."  ' 

Though  Lotzc  repudiates  the  attempt  to  deduce  our  knowledge 
from  some  one  general  principle,  such  as  the  Idea,  he  does  not 
go  to  the  opposite  extreme  and  proclaim  that  such  a  procedure 
has  no  meaning  at  all.'  On  the  contrary,  he  sees  what  meaning 
there  is  in  it,  and  gladly  admits  its  value.  So  far  as  this  method 
recognizes  the  unity  of  the  world,  it  keeps  before  the  philosopher 
an  ideal. ^  It  is  a  regulative  principle  which  means  that  all  knowl- 
edge aims  at  unity,  ancj  should  aim  at  unity.  Nevertheless,  this 
unity  must  never  be  used  as  a  principle  of  explanation  from 
which  new  truth  can  be  deduced.  Every  such  attempt  to  begin 
with  the  idea  is  a  petitio  principii,  for  it  is  only  through  the  knowl- 
edge of  particulars  that  we  can  attain  the  knowledge  of  general 
truth.  Knowledge  begins  with  experience  and  rises  gradually  to 
more  comprehensive  insight.''  Notwithstanding  this  truth  that 
we  must  advance  in  knowledge  by  the  slow  and  plodding  way 
of  experience,  an  ideal  outruns  our  actual  knowledge,  and  is  in  a 
measure  its  formative  principle,  and  determines  its  worth. ^ 

The  critical  method  of  Locke  and  Kant  is  an  aspect  of  a  priori 
deduction.  This  method  makes  a  systematic  enquiry  into  the 
capacity  of  the  human  mind  for  the  attainment  of  knowledge. 
According  to  it  the  first  problem  is  to  find  a  theory  of  knowledge 
which  shall  make  clear  the  extent  and  limitations  of  human  knowl- 
edge. Locke  and  some  friends  were  discussing  a  problem,  and 
reached  only  bewildering  difficulties.  "After  we  had  awhile 
puzzled  ourselves,"  he  says,  "without  coming  any  nearer  a  reso- 
lution of  those  doubts   which  perplexed    us,  it    came  into  my 

1  Theory  of  Knowledge,  p.  475. 

^Logik,  l\  322-333- 

^Ibid.,  I  365. 

*  Met.,  ^  93  ;  Erdmann  :   op.  cil.,  \  347,  II. 

5Cf.  Mikr.,  I,  pp.  675  ff,  685. 


20  LOTZES    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

thoughts  that  we  took  a  wrong  course,  and  that  before  we  set 
ourselves  upon  enquiries  of  that  nature,  it  was  necessary  to  ex- 
amine our  own  abihties,  and  see  what  objects  our  understandings 
were  or  were  not  fitted  to  deal  with."^  Modest  as  this  method 
may  seem,  it  is  as  dogmatic  as  the  method  it  supplants.  Reason 
cannot  once  for  all  determine  what  is  knowable,  and  what  is  un- 
knowable. "  There  is  something,"  says  Lotze,  "  convenient  and 
seductive  in  the  plan  of  withdrawing  attention  from  the  solution 
of  definite  questions,  and  applying  oneself  to  general  questions  in 
regard  to  cognitive  capacities,  of  which  any  one  could  avail  him- 
self who  set  seriously  about  it.  In  fact,  however,  the  history  of 
science  shows  that  those  who  resolutely  set  themselves  to  mas- 
tering certain  problems  generally  found  that  their  cognizance  of 
the  available  appliances  and  of  the  use  of  them  grew  keener  in  the 
process  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  pretentious  occupation  with 
theories  of  cognition  has  seldom  led  to  any  solid  result.  It  has 
not  itself  created  those  methods  which  it  entertains  itself  with  ex- 
hibiting but  not  employing.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  actual 
problems  that  have  compelled  the  discovery  of  the  methods  by 
which  they  are  solved.  The  constant  whetting  of  the  knife  is 
tedious,  if  it  is  not  proposed  to  cut  anything  with  it."^  We  can- 
not discover  or  prove  by  reason  that  reason  is  capable  or  incapable 
of  knowledge.  Instinctively  or  immediately  we  trust  in  the  unity 
of  reality  and  set  about  its  disclosure,  believing  that  we  are  able 
to  accomplish  somewhat  of  the  task.^ 

The  first  form  of  explanation  seeks  to  explain  a  fact  by  deduc- 
ing it  from  some  general  principle.  But  there  is  another  kind  of 
explanation  which  explains  a  fact  by  constructing  it.  This  method 
Lotze  also  rejects,  not  completely,  however,  for  he  gives  it  a 
methodological  function  in  so  far  as  it  is  useful  in  detecting  the 
elements  or  aspects  of  the  nature  of  any  object  or  process.  This 
mode  of  explanation  may  be  called  the-  analytico-synthetic 
method.  According  to  it  anything  is  accounted  for  when  it  has 
been  analyzed  into  its  constituents,  and  when,  these  elements  be- 

'  Essay  :      The  Epistle  to  the  Reader. 

2  Met.  Introd.,  \  IX  ;  Logik,  \  322  ;  Cf.  Hegel  :  Encyk.,  \l,  10,  41  ;  Werke,  VI, 
pp.  15-17  ;  85-89;  Seth,  A.,  Hegelianis77i  and  Personality,  p.  90. 

3  Cf.  Tuch  :  Lotze' s  Stellung  z.  Occasionalismus,  p.  I. 


PROBLEM  A.\D  METHOD.  21 

ing  again  put  together,  the  thing  arises  in  its  true  nature.  One 
example  will  make  this  plain  :  The  process  of  becoming  has  been 
subjected  to  this  method,  and  an  effort  made  to  analyze  it  into 
its  elements.  As  it  stands  the  category  is  not  understood,  and 
the  labor  of  centuries  has  been  spent  on  attempts  to  analyze  it. 
For  a  few  years  the  analysis  seemed  to  have  been  attained  when 
Hegel  imagined  he  was  able  to  give  the  synthesis  of  becoming. 
It  is  composed  of  two  elements,  he  said,  being  and  non-being. 
In  separation  these  constituents  are  static,  united  into  a  compound, 
fluid.  Plausible,  however,  as  this  theory  may  seem,  Lotze  opposes 
it  strenuously,  and  declares  that  the  matter  is  not  really  explained 
at  all.  Of  becoming,  he  maintains,  "  we  can  never  put  it 
together  out  of  its  component  parts,  for  it  has  none.  The  labor 
expended  upon  this  impossible  aim  always  ends  in  a  vicious  circle, 
since  among  the  materials  that  are  to  be  used  in  the  construction 
the  very  thing  that  was  to  be  constructed  is  taken  for  granted, 
however  much  it  may  be  concealed  under  strange  expressions. 
Thus,  for  example,  in  our  idea  of  becoming  the  two  ideas  of  be- 
ing and  not -being  are  no  doubt  united  as  two  connected  points 
of  relation  ;  but  if  we  should  try  to  characterize  becoming  as  the 
unity  of  the  two  we  should  not  attain  our  object."  ^  There  is  no 
use  in  attempting  to  define  a  thing,  or  to  get  at  its  essence  by  its 
construction  out  of  parts.  Such  a  method  may  be  able  to  dis- 
cover what  a  compound  is  composed  of,  but  it  cannot  express 
what  the  thing  is.  This  objection  is  as  old  as  Plato,'  and  Aris- 
totle. To  use  Aristotle's  language,  the  material  cause  alone  is 
not  adequate  to  explain  anything.  Furthermore,  '  becoming  '  is 
only  one  instance  in  which  knowledge  is  broader  than  intellectual 
understanding.  We  can  knozu  many  things  which  we  cannot 
understand — in  the  sense  that  they  can  be  constructed  out  of 
elements.  As  was  seen  above,  intellect  desires  to  "  picture  the 
ultimate  facts  of  reality  "  and  show  hozv  they  fit  together  to  form 
objects.'  Knowledge,  indeed,  does  not  end  here.  Much  of  ex- 
perience  defies  such  analysis.     We  can  live  these    experiences, 

1  Logik,  ?.  159. 

2  Cf.   ThecEtetus,  207,  208. 

3Cf.  Gr.  d.  Religionsphil.,  g  21. 


22  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

but  cannot  explain  them/  Not  only  does  analysis  fail  to  explain 
some  of  the  more  subtle  parts  of  experience,  but  it  is  insufficient 
to  explain  anything  at  all.  It  is  only  part  of  the  explanation, 
and  as  a  part  it  is  indispensable,  but  it  must  not  be  taken  for  the 
complete  explanation.  The  material  cause  alone  can  never  be 
the  full  explanation  of  any  fact.  As  an  example,  the  equation 
a  -\-  b  ^  c  may  be  taken.  In  this  equation  c  is  analyzed  into 
a  and  b.  And  when  a  and  b  are  related  so  that  the  quantities 
they  represent  are  added  together  their  sum  is  equal  to  c.  But 
how  a  -\-  b  can  be  equal  to  c  is  not  explained ;  for  while  the  two 
sides  of  the  equation  are  numerically  equal,  they  are  not  identical, 
otherwise  there  would  be  no  equation.^  This  shows  that  this 
method  is  not  adequate  for  philosophy  ;  and  where  it  is  used,  it 
gives  only  imperfect  results. 

The  method  is  valuable,  however,  only  its  results  must  not 
be  taken  as  final.  Like  the  method  of  a  priori  deduction  it  has 
a  methodological  use ;  and  its  conclusions  must  be  reinterpreted 
in  connection  with  our  broader  experience.  All  that  analysis  can 
accomplish  is  to  find  out  the  conspicuous  aspects  of  an  object, 
and  direct  attention  to  these.  It  may  be  that  some  characteristic 
aspect  will  be  isolated,  an  aspect  by  which  it  can  be  marked,  named, 
and  recognized,  when  it  appears  again.  The  analysis  however  has 
not  manifested  the  living  tissue  of  the  thing.  "  Reality  is  richer 
than  thought,  nor  can  thought  make  reality  after  it.  The  fact  of 
becoming  was  enough  to  convince  us  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  union  of  being  and  not-being,  which  we  are  not  able  to  re- 
construct in  thought,  even  when  it  lies  before  us,  much  less  could 
have  guessed  at  it  if  it  had  not  been  presented  to  us."^  When 
analysis  has  done  its  best,  it  has  resolved  an  object,  e.  g.,  a  lemon 
into  certain  tastes,  odors,  colors,  pressure  sensations,  etc.,  but  it 
has  not  exhausted  the  nature  of  the  lemon.  And  suppose  this 
analysis  could  continue  and  discover  more  qualities,  we  would 
be  no  nearer  a  knowledge  of  how  these  qualities /t^rw,  or  ure  as- 
pects of,  the  lemon.     The  fact  that  we  do  not  know  how  to  state 

iCf.  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  662,  663 ;  Met.,  I  47. 
^Logik,  II  350-364- 
^Mei.,  §47. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  23 

the  relation  of  quality  and  object  is  a  convincing  argument  that 
neither  thought  nor  scientific  analysis  or  synthesis  is  competent 
to  construct  an  object.  This  method  must  always  be  accompan- 
ied by  a  reconstruction  and  a  remodeling  of  its  results.' 

III.  So  far  it  has  been  seen  that  the  various  methods  and  con- 
cepts must  be  limited,  supplemented,  and  reinterpreted.  This  use 
of  concepts  is  methodological.  By  a  methodological  concept  is 
meant  a  device  or  regulative  principle  by  means  of  which  the 
human  mind  seeks  to  make  intelligible  a  group  of  facts.  Any 
body  of  knowledge  possesses  only  methodological  concepts, 
and  does  not  provide  a  final  or  complete  explanation  of  things. 
All  our  concepts  express  a  certain  aspect  of  reality ;  they  help 
the  mind  to  comprehend  things,  but  in  no  case  are  they  complete 
or  final.  They  are  Hilfsbegriffe.  For  this  reason  they  are  par- 
tially true,  and  to  a  certain  extent  report  reality  correctly.  It 
has  been  said  that  nothing  corresponds  to  them  in  the  nature  of 
things  ;  that  they  are  merely  subjective.  But  if  this  were  Lotze's 
meaning,  then  they  would  not  be  concepts  conveying  knowl- 
edge ;  they  would  be  nothing  but  fictions.  They  are  human 
ways  of  understanding  reality,  to  be  sure,  but  as  man  is  a  part  of 
reality,  these  concepts  are  objective  as  well  as  subjective.  Since 
man  belongs  to  reahty,  it  is  not  possible  for  him  to  think  and 
know  in  a  purely  subjective,  i.  e.,  in  a  purely  arbitrary,  way.' 
Yet  he  is  only  a  part  of  reality,  and  cannot  therefore  behold  things 
in  the  way  the  deity  sees  them.  His  knowledge  is  for  this  reason 
incomplete  ;  it  is  methodological. 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  methodological  use  of  concepts  is 
seen  in  Lotze's  examination  of  life.  In  the  first  place  he  finds  that  to 
a  "  great  extent  "  "  life  employs  for  the  execution  of  its  functions 
the  same  means  by  which  human  mechanical  skill  produces  its 
works."  ^  This  mechanism  holds  not  only  of  the  lower,  but  also 
of  the  higher  forms  of  life.*  Nevertheless,  the  phenomena  of  con- 
scio.usness  demand  a  higher  category  than  that  of  mechanism.® 
The  consequence  is  that  mental  and  bodily  phenomena  cannot  be 
grouped  under  the  same  rubric.     Now,  bodily  and  mental  phe- 

^Mikr.,  II,  p.  141.  ^■Uid.,  I,  p.  137. 

2  Logik,  I  359  ;  Mei.,  g^  90,  94.  ^ Met.,  §  269. 

^ Mikr.,  I,  p.  120. 


24  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

nomena  do  not  belong  to  two  absolutely  distinct  spheres,  but 
are  ultimately  one.^  Lotze,  however,  prefers  to  use  different  cat- 
egories, each  best  suited  for  its  own  facts.  Since,  now,  all  reality 
is  ultimately  one,  if  the  concept  of  mechanism  completely  ex- 
plained the  corporeal  phenomena,  then  this  concept  would  be 
constitutive,  and  would  also  account  for  mental  phenomena.  But 
it  does  not  adequately  explain  corporeal  facts.  It  is  a  Hilfsbe- 
griff,  used  to  classify  a  definite  group  of  phenomena.  Mental 
phenomena  differ  widely  from  bodily,  so  a  new  concept  is  neces- 
sary. This  also  is  a^  methodological  concept.  Our  limited 
knowledge  does  not  show  us  how  all  things  form  a  unity ;  and 
consequently  it  would  be  only  a  false  craving  for  unity  that  would 
at  once  merge  the  sharp  contrast  between  these  two  concepts  in 
something  higher.  While  we  do  not  know  the  unity,  we  must 
hold  our  concepts  apart  and  keep  them  distinct,  though  in  reality 
the  things  denoted  by  them  belong  to  a  unity.^  Again  the  method- 
ological nature  of  his  conception  of  the  relation  of  body  and  soul  is 
striking.  Our  knowledge  does  not  warrant  the  concept  of  causal 
relation.  For  this  relation,  therefore,  Lotze  uses  the  concept  of 
occasionalism.  This  concept  is  not  a  metaphysical  doctrine.  On 
the  contrary,  it  provides  a  means  of  thinking  the  relation  of  body 
and  soul,  a  means  which  is  fairly  adequate  to  the  facts  as  now 
known.  As  such  it  is  useful ;  as  a  metaphysical  conception  it  is 
of  no  value.  ^ 

This  recognition  of  the  methodological  nature  of  concepts  may 
be  called  the  critical  method  ;  for  it  calls  in  question  the  right  of 
transferring  finite  ways  of  thinking  to  reality.  The  invesigator 
who  is  not  aware  that  his  concepts  are  in  process  of  formation, 
that  they  are  human  ways  of  comprehending  reality,  and  there - 
fere  only  partially  true,  being  limited  to  a  narrow  field  of  thought, 
is  the  real  dogmatist.  The  critical  philosopher,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  he  who  is  conscious  of  the  imperfection  of  the  principles 
he  uses,  is  aware  of  their  limited  application,  and  knows  that  they 

"^Met.,  \\  247-252;  Mikr.,  Bk.  III. 

^Mikr.,  I,  p.  167. 

^ Med.  Psy.,  pp.  76,  77-  Cf.,also  Tuch  :  op.  cit.,  pp.  20,  21.  The  importance  of 
methodological  concepts  is  clearly  seen  in  the  discussion  on  the  nature  of  a  thing. 
Met.,  I  94. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD.  2$ 

represent  only  one  aspect  of  things.  Consequently,  he  will  not 
extend  their  use,  nor  will  he  regard  them  as  the  constitutive  prin- 
ciples of  reality.  In  other  words  he  will  not  regard  his  concepts 
as  identical  with  the  concepts  which  would  be  used  by  an  omnis- 
cient being.  He  admits  that  his  knowledge  is  to  some  extent 
his  own  way  of  comprehending  things,  and  regards  it  as  only 
partially  objective.  In  other  words  his  categories  are  methodo- 
logical and  not  constitutive  principles. 

IV.  Wherever  an  empirical  method  is  used,  an  important  ele- 
ment in  determining  what  is  true  and  what  is  false,  is  utility.  The 
hypothesis  or  category  that  works  well  is  adopted,  and  the  one 
which  works  ill  is  put  aside.  Man  is  not  yet  ready  for  a  pure  logic 
which  will  enable  him  to  determine  the  value  of  every  principle  and 
concept  by  means  of  an  analysis  of  the  Idea.  His  pursuits  are  in 
a  far  humbler  sphere,  and  he  must  take  a  zig-zag  road,  following 
at  times  happy  intuitions,  and  again  wandering  on  an  illusory 
quest.  It  is  only  when  the  mountain  top  is  reached  that  he  can 
obtain  the  complete  view.'  All  the  way  up,  to  be  sure,  he  gets 
a  partial  prospect,  or  a  part  of  the  truth."  To  continue  the  fig- 
ure :  the  survey  from  the  summit  gives  constitutive  categories, 
that  from  the  sides,  and  base,  methodological.  Though,  indeed, 
pure  logic  lays  bare  and  brings  into  consciousness  the  ultimate 
principles  and  the  ideal  which  is  implicit  in  all  thinking,  it  can 
only  provide  regulative  principles.  The  whole  content,  how- 
ever, of  these  principles,  and  the  particular  laws  and  concepts  in 
our  actual  knowledge  are  derived  from  a  careful  analysis  of  ex- 
perience. Pure  logic,  or  dialectic,  is  on  the  other  hand,  an  eval- 
uation of  experience,  and  not  its  basis.  It  is  a  reflection  on  ex- 
perience in  which  the  categories  are  already  present.^  The 
dialectic  schema,  however,  is  of  no  aid  in  discovery  except  as  a 
regulative  principle.  But  discovery  is  man's  first  task.  He  is 
met  by  myriads  of  facts  which  he  has  simply  to  accept,  and  group 
in  the  way  that  will  best  aid  memory,  and  the  disclosure  of  new 
facts.  The  ^(?rt/  is  a  complete  system  of  knowledge  "but  the 
different  peculiarities  of  different  objects  offer  resistance  to  this 

1  Logik,  \  345. 

^Mikr.,^  I,  pp.  334  f. 

^  Logik,  ^l  191-196  ;  Cf.  Seth  :  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  Ch.  III. 


26  LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

arrangement ;  it  is  not  clear  of  itself  what  sum  of  matter  has  a 
claim  to  form  a  determinate  concept  and  be  opposed  to  another, 
or  which  predicate  belongs  universally  to  which  subject,  or  how 
the  universal  law  for  the  arrangement  of  manifold  material  is  to 
be  discovered.  AppHed  logic  is  concerned  with  those  methods 
of  investigation  which  obviate  these  defects.  It  considers  hind- 
rances and  the  devices  by  which  they  may  be  overcome ;  and  it 
must  therefore  sacrifice  the  love  of  systematization  to  considera- 
tions of  utility,  and  select  what  the  experience  of  science  has  so 
far  shown  to  be  important  and  fruitful."^ 

The  laws  and  hypotheses  by  means  of  which  knowledge  is 
built  up  are  at  first  tentative  guesses  "  on  the  part  of  the  imagi- 
nation, made  possible  by  a  knowledge  of  facts,"^  which  have  re- 
ceived confirmation  by  their  explanation  of  the  facts, ^  They  also 
receive  confirmation  by  extending  beyond  the  immediate  facts, 
which  they  were  introduced  to  explain,  so  as  to  lead  to  the  dis- 
covery of  new  facts.  Now  a  question  may  arise:  "  How  do  we 
know  that  such  and  such  a  law  is  the  only  one  valid  for  the 
series  and  true  ?"  Lotze  answers  that  there  is  no  a  priori  ]\xs\l\^- 
cation  of  any  law,  or  any  deductive  confirmation  of  its  truth. 
Its  only  justification  is  its  capability  to  explain  the  facts  of  ex- 
perience for  which  purpose.it  was  invented.  "There  is  no  proc- 
ess of  demonstration  by  which  we  can  find  such  a  law,  none  by 
which  it  could  be  shown  to  be  what  it  claims  to  be.  We  can 
never  do  more  than  guess  at  the  law,  and  then  by  the  help  of 
innumerable  secondary  considerations  heighten  the  probability 
of  its  being  the  true  one."* 

Notwithstanding  Lotze's  treatment  of  the  deductive  method, 
his  own  procedure  has  not  escaped  criticism.  According  to 
Krebs,  Lotze  distinguishes  two  kinds  of  truth. ^  One  is  im- 
mediate and  indemonstrable,  resting  on  self-evidence,  the  other 
is  derived  from  this  immediate  truth.     The  former  truths  neither 

^Logik,  Introd.,  I  XII;  Cf.  also,  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  326,  343;  Merz  :  Article  Lotze  in 
Ency.  Brit.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  14. 
^Logik,  \  269. 
^  Ibid.,  I  273. 
^  Ibid.,  I  269. 
^ Die  Wissenchaftsbegriff  bei  Hermann  Lotze,  V.  f.  w.  Ph.,  Vol.  XXI,  p.  t,2)  ^- 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  2/ 

need  nor  are  capable  of  proof,  the  latter  are  logically  demon- 
strated from  the  self-evident  truths.  Krcbs,  therefore,  maintains 
that  Lotze's  logical  criterion  of  truth  must  be  supplemented  by 
the  conception  that  truth  proves  itself  in  the  course  of  enquiry. 
But  so  far  as  I  can  understand  Lotze,  this  criticism  is  not  just. 
Further,  the  method  which  Krebs  recommends  is  Lotze's  own 
method,  as  has  been  seen.  Lotze's  method  is  not  deductive,  and 
he  does  not  derive  the  truths  of  science  from  general  self-evi- 
dent principles  in  the  way  in  which  Krebs  maintains.  To  be 
sure,  he  does  use  self-evident  principles ;  but  the  above  criti- 
cism has  misunderstood  the  use  he  makes  of  them.  While  Lotze 
uses  the  empirical  method,  he  is  not  a  mere  empiricist,  but  always 
recognizes  the  need  of  ultimate  principles.  The  mind  for  him  is 
not  a  passive  spectator  of  existence.  It  does  not  mirror  reality, 
but  interprets  it.  For  this  reason  it  requires  principles  of  inter- 
pretation, which  are  ideal  forms  that  the  mind  instinctively  strives 
to  realize.  They  are  vague  glimmers  of  the  ultimate  synthesis.^ 
These  forms  are  the  modes  in  which  the  mind  knows,  and  with- 
out them  there  could  be  no  knowledge.^  Self-evident  truths  are 
the  categories  of  thought — the  laws  of  identity  and  causation,^ 
unity  in  difference,^  intuitive  forms  of  space  and  time.^  Now' it  is 
evident  that  these  truths  are  not  knowledge  from  which  other 
knowledge  can  be  deduced.  They  are,  rather,  modes  of  mental 
activity  or  synthesis  which  are  immediately  admitted  to  be  neces- 
sary forms  of  knowing.^  From  the  law  of  identity,  unaided  by 
experience,  nothing  can  be  inferred."  Causation  without  a  content 
is  empty.  It  possesses  only  hypothetical  necessity.  "  None  of 
these  necessary  truths  reveals  to  us  what  is  ;  as  universal  laws 
they  speak  only  of  that  which  must  be  if  something  else  is  ;  they 
show  us  what  inevitably  follows  from  conditions  the  occurrence 

^Logik,  ??34S-365. 

^IbiiL,  \\    322-333;    Met.,  \?i    267-274;     Mikr.,   I,  pp.   220-239;    Cf.    also 
Kant's  Deduction  of  the  Categories. 
^Mikr.,  I,  p.  671. 
*  Logik,  .§§  356,  363  ff. 
^ Mikr.,  I,  p.  226. 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  226  ff;   66S  ff ;   Met.,  \  99. 
'  Logik,  \\  352-361. 


28  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

of  which  they  leave  wholly  doubtful/  Therefore,  it  can  be  con- 
cluded that  these  immediate  truths  are  not  used  by  Lotze  as 
major  premises  from  which  all  scientific  knowledge  is  deduced 
logically.  Since,  however,  Lotze  employs  self-evident  truth  in 
this  restricted  sense,^  let  us  see  if  he  uses  this  species  of  innate 
knowledge  as  a  major  premise.  An  example  of  this  truth  is 
mathematics.  This  kind  of  truth,  indeed,  is  not  discovered  by 
pure  thought,  but  depends  upon  experience.^  Each  step  is  based 
upon  a  perception,  and, is  not  derived  from  the  preceding  as  from 
a  major  premise.  For  thesQ  reasons  Lotze  does  not  regard  science 
as  a  body  of  a  priori  knowledge  resting  upon  one  or  several 
fundamental  principles.^  On  the  contrary,  he  maintains  that  all 
knowledge  is  obtained  by  means  of  empirical  methods — methods, 
however,  guided  by  the  soul's  deeper  nature  which  being  a  unity 
endeavors  to  interpret  experience  as  ultimately  a  unity,  and  being 
an  end  naturally  interprets  reality  in  terms  of  a  final  unity  towards 
which  it  strives. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  methodology  belongs  to  scientific 
method  only,  and  that  it  does  not  have  anything  to  do  with  im- 
mediate truth.  This  immediate  truth  is  claimed  to  rest  on  a  dif- 
ferent basis,  and  to  have  a  validity  independent  of  all  experience. 
But  again  we  must  keep  to  the  spirit  of  Lotze,  if  we  mean  to  in- 
terpret him.  Innate  truth  is  not  privileged,  and  in  a  strict  sense 
is  not  truth  at  all,  but  rather  a  form  of  truth.  Knowledge  de- 
pends upon  innate  ideas.  This,  indeed,  gives  them  no  sanctity 
for  the  a  posteriori  element  is  just  as  necessary.  Knowledge  im- 
plies toil.^  Innate  ideas  are  "nothing  but  habits  of  action,"^; 
but  they  do  not  exist  ready-made  in  the  mind.''  Each,  on  the 
contrary,  has  been  evolved.  It  is  what  it  is,  and  can  do  what  it 
does  because  it  has  been  instructed  thus  by  the  press  of  circum- 
stances.^    What  is  true  of  innate  ideas  in  the  intellectual  world 

^Mikr.,  II,  p.  575. 

^Logik,  I  357. 

^ibid.,  u  352,  358. 

^Cf.  §2. 

^Logik,  U  322-333- 

^  Mikr.,  I,  p.  669. 

T  Logik,  I  9. 

sCf.  Mikr.,  I,  pp.  227  ff;  Logik,  ?  324. 


PROBLEM  AND  METHOD.  29 

is  true  of  ethical  ideals  in  the  moral  cosmos/  To  have  innate 
ideas  is  simply  to  possess  the  capacity  of  knowing.  The  partic- 
ular innate  ideas  a  man  uses  depends  on  his  mental  constitution" 
and  also  on  his  environment.^  The  soul  as  such  knoivs,  and  this 
may  be  its  so-called  instinct,  but  it  knows  and  meets  the  real 
world  with  modes  of  activity  which  become  increasingly  definite 
with  experience.*  Thus  it  is  obvious  that  innate  truth  is  only 
the  form  of  all  truth,  and  can  be  no  less  methodological  than  the 
more  definite  concepts.  All  alike  are  human  ways  of  interpret- 
ing reality"' ;  and,  as  has  been  shown,  .an  important  aspect  of  the 
criterion  of  truth  is  its  ability  to  fit  in  with  other  truths  and  as- 
sist in  their  explanation. 

V.  The  failure  to  understand  Lotze's  methodological  point  of 
view  and  his  notion  of  the  criterion  of  truth,  has  been  the  occasion 
of  much  unfair  criticism.  Many  of  his  critics  cannot  understand 
an  idealism  which  is  realistic  in  method.  They  regard  idealism 
as  a  systematic  deduction  of  all  knowledge  (or  sometimes  of  all 
reality)  from  a  general  principle.  Idealism  is  taken  to  be  syn- 
onymous with  '  system  '  in  the  Hegelian  sense  of  the  term.  But 
as  has  been  shown  (II)  the  term  'system'  has  two  meanings,  a 
metaphysical  and  a  logical.  The  former  refers  to  the  nature  of 
the  world,  and  the  latter  to  knowledge  about  the  world.  Now 
only  a  complete  and  perfect  system  of  knowledge  can  show  how 
the  world  emanates  from  the  idea.  Man's  knowledge  is  not,  how- 
ever, a  system  except  in  a  very  limited  sense.  Notwithstanding, 
however,  Lotze's  clear  and  decided  conviction  on  this  point, 
Caspari  maintains  that  he  should  have  constructed  a  system  of 
knowledge.  In  summing  up  his  criticism  of  Lotze's  philosophy, 
he  says  that  Lotze's  service  consists  more  in  acute  suggestions 
than  in  its  systematic  results,  and  that  he  has  not  thought  out  the 
relations  in  which  individual  things  stand  to  the  Idea.^  Achelis 
raises  the  same  objection,  maintaining  that  Lotze  does  not  ex- 
plain in  a  satisfactory  manner  the  origin  of  existences  emerging 
from  the  being  of  the  Absolute,  and  that  furthermore  he  does  not 

»Cf.  Mikr.,  II,  p.  226.        '^Ihid.,  I  324. 

^Ibid.,  I,  p.  669.  5Cf.  Met.,  \?i  94,  99. 

3  Logik,  §  9,  6  Hermann  Lotze  in  Stellung   z.  Gesc/i,  d.  Phil. 


30  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

get  beyond  the  theory  of  preestabHshed  harmony.^  All  these 
criticisms  regard  philosophy  as  a  system  of  knowledge,  and  do 
not  distinguish  methodology  from  a  constitutive  use  of  the  cate- 
gories. 

In  conclusion,  it  may  be  said  that  methodology  is  the  key  to 
Lotze's  philosophy.  Human  knowledge  is  not  an  organic  system, 
and  cannot  be  such.  It  is  impossible  to  see  how  our  experience 
all  fits  together  into  an  harmonious  whole.  At  best  human 
knowledge  consists  of  many  little  fragments  into  which  the 
special  scientists  are  laboring  to  induce  order.  But  a  science  of 
the  whole  is  still  far  off  We  niay  have,  it  is  true,  a  science  of 
the  whole  in  outline  only  ;  but  such  a  science  is  rather  a  demand 
for,  and  a  faith  in,  the  unity  which  is  not  yet  known.  Now 
philosophy  can  be  little  more  than  this  demand  for  and  belief  in 
the  unity  which  is  not  yet  known.  It  is  more  than  this,  how- 
ever, in  that  philosophy  endeavors  to  make  this  demand  and 
beHef  consistent  with  the  facts  of  experience.  Compared  with 
experience,  philosophical  knowledge  is  a  science  in  mere  outline, 
and  does  not  provide  an  ultimate  principle  from  which  experience 
can  be  deduced.  The  best  scientific  theory  is  capable  only  within 
limits  of  being  the  premise  from  which  knowledge  can  be  derived. 
Much  less,  indeed,  can  philosophical  first  principles  serve  for  the 
deduction  of  knowledge.  Lotze,  therefore,  maintains  that  the 
a  priori  method  is  useless  for  philosophy.  On  the  contrary,  he 
holds  that  all  enquiry  must  follow  the  empirical  method.  The 
qtiest  of  knoivledge  must  always  proceed  from  experience  to  laws 
and  concepts,  and  not  from  general  principles  to  the  facts  of  ex- 
perience. This  quest,  therefore,  necessarily  groups  its  facts  in 
various  ways,  adopting  those  forms  of  synthesis  which  serve  best 
for  the  matter  in  hand.  But  another  enquirer  with  different  pur- 
poses, or  perhaps  even  with  the  same  purpose,  would  have  ar- 
ranged them  differently,  and  would  have  given  a  different  mean- 
ing to  his  concepts.  Again,  different  parts  of  the  field  differ 
widely,  though  all  belong  together.  Now  when  this  is  the  case, 
and  when  the  investigator  does  not  know  how  the  various  parts 
all  belong  organically  to  one  unity,  he  distinguishes  the  different 

^Lotze's  Phil.,  V.  f.  w.,  Ph.,  1882.  Cf.  also,  Stahlin  :  Kant,  Lotze  and Ritschl 
(Eng.  trans.),  pp.   118-128. 


PROBLEM   A  AD   METHOD.  3 1 

functions  by  means  of  categories  which  are  partially  or  even 
totally  exclusive.  It  is  better  to  emphasize  the  characteristic  of 
each,  even  at  the  cost  of  distinguishing  them  completely,  than 
to  lose  the  characteristic  in  general  conceptions  which  aim  at  cover- 
ing both  groups  of  facts.  Such  limitations,  however,  belong  to 
finite  knowledge  alone.  A  perfect  intelligence  would  have  no  such 
limitations.  For  such  an  intelligence  each  category  would  denote 
its  object-system,  not  emphasizing  anyone  characteristic,  but  giving 
every  aspect  its  actual  value.  Consequently  the  categories  of  com- 
plete knowledge  would  form  a  system,  just  as  reality  which  is 
known  thereby,  is  a  system.  In  such  a  case  the  categories 
would  be  constitutive.  With  human  knowledge,  as  has  been 
shown,  it  is  very  different.  The  concepts  do  not  form  a  system. 
Each  has  grasped  only  an  aspect  and  has  emphasized  that.  Com- 
pared, therefore,  with  complete  categories  human  concepts  are 
distortions,  one-sided,  and  in  need  of  qualification.  This  limita- 
tion of  concepts  Lotze  denominates  by  the  term  methodological. 
One  illustration  shows  the  importance  of  this  conception.  All 
investigations  of  bodily  and  mental  functions,  explain  bodily  proc- 
esses by  one  set  of  categories,  and  mental  processes  by  another. 
So  far  little  success  has  been  attained  in  the  attempt  to  unify 
these  two  sets  of  conceptions.  Clear  thinking  demands  that 
they  be  kept  apart.  Nevertheless,  these  concepts  must  not  be 
made  constitutive,  for  that  would  mean  a  dualism  between  body 
and  mind.  They  are  methodological  only,  and  when  this  is 
recognized  they  are  used  critically.  In  no  case,  therefore,  are 
we  pledged  to  a  metaphysical  dualism  when  we  are  unable  to  see 
how  two  concepts  can  be  united.  This  conception  of  methodology 
solves  philosophically,  not  only  the  problem  of  body  and  soul, 
but  also  the  problems  of  appearance  and  reality,  subject  and 
object,  sense  and  thought  etc. 

The  two  following  chapters,  dealing  with  the  metaphysical  ba- 
sis of  Lotze' s  theory  of  knowledge,  will  enquire  into  the  problem, 
and  the  nature  of  the  solution  which  Lotze  has  given  to  the  ques- 
tions of  appearance  and  reality,  and  of  subject  and  object.  The 
problem  of  the  relation  of  sense  and  thought  belongs  rather  to 
logic  and  psychology,  and  .will  not  be  dealt  with  at  present. 


CHAPTER   II. 


THE    APPEARANCE    OF    REALITY. 


IN  chapter  I  we  discussed  the  nature  of  Lotze's  problem  and 
method.  From  the  point  of  view  thus  gained  we  will  now 
proceed  to  interpret  his  doctrine  of  the  appearance  of  reality.  In 
order  to  understand  this  problem,  and  the  way  in  which  it  was 
solved,  let  us  examine  somewhat  carefully  the  intellectual  at- 
mosphere in  which  Lotze  grew  up.  Since  Lotze's  philosophical 
system  was  constructed  as  early  as  1841,  we  need  not  consider 
problems  which  arose  after  that  date.  In  logic  two  distinct 
views  were  advanced.  One  was  phenomenalism,  the  other  abso- 
lute idealism.  Phenomenalism,  on  its  scientific  side,  was  regarded 
as  empiricism.  It  represented  the  world  of  actual  fact,  knowl- 
edge of  which  must  be  obtained  through  experience,  and  by 
means  of  the  Baconian  method.^  This  empiricism  profoundly 
influenced  Lotze,  and  gave  both  him  and  Herbart  their  method. 
On  its  philosophical  side,  however,  phenomenalism  was  not  so 
fortunate.  Remaining  in  its  Kantian  form,  it  made  a  knowledge 
of  reality  impossible,  so  that  a  reinterpretation  of  empiricism  be- 
came necessary.  Neither  did  absolute  idealism  solve  the  prob- 
lem undertaken  by  Kant.  It  ran  counter  to  the  empirical  ten- 
dency of  the  age,  and  had  a  contempt  for  empirical  knowledge.^ 
Before  Hegel's  death  the  disintegration  of  his  doctrine  that 
thought  is  reality,  had  begun.  The  new  movement  developed 
in  some  cases  in  the  direction  of  pantheism  and  atheism,^  in  others 
towards  materialism.^  Now  Kantian  empiricism  with  the  un- 
knowability  of  reality  on  the  one  side,  and  Hegelian  specula- 
tion with  its  doctrine  of  the  identity  of  thought  and  reality  on  the 
other,  represent  the  two  extreme  sides  of  philosophical  specula- 
tion.     Nevertheless  these  two  antithetic  systems  contain  concep- 

1  Cf.  Beneke  :  Erdmann,  op.  cit.,  \  334,  I-2.     Beneke  was  one  of  the  first  to  object 
to  the  speculative  method  of  philosophy. 

2 Erdmann:  op.  cit.,  l\  333,  2;   347,  II. 
3/<5/a'.,  I  338,  1-5. 
^Ibid.,  I  345. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  33 

tions  of  vital  importance  ;  and  as  Lotze's  own  theory  of  knowl- 
edge and  reality  lies  somewhere  between  these  two  points  of 
view,  it  will  serve  to  interpret  his  philosophy  if  we  examine  the 
Kantian  and  Hegelian  theory  of  knowledge,  and  then  show 
how  his  theory  is  related  to  these  two  positions.  These  two 
theories  dominated  German  thought  when  Lotze  was  at  the  uni- 
versity, and  it  was  natural  that  he  should  mediate  between  them, 
since  he  sympathized  with,  and  was  a  careful  student  of,  both 
empirical  and  speculative  philosophy.' 

I.  Kant,  holding  the  common-sense  point  of  view,  and  also 
the  common-sense  interpretation  of  that  point  of  view,  began  with 
the  assumption  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  reality,  material  and 
spiritual  existences.  These  two  existences — things-in-themselves, 
and  the  ego — have  some  causal  influence  upon  oneanother;  but  what 
this  relation  implied  Kant  did  not  enquire.  His  aim  was  chiefly 
epistemological,  and  his  special  endeavor  was  to  discover  the  ma- 
chinery of  knowing.  According  to  his  conception,  the  external 
object  affects  the  subject  only  in  sense,  and  by  means  of  this  ac- 
tivity impressions  are  made  upon  sense,  which  are  the  data  the  mind 
synthetizes  by  means  of  its  categories.  Thus  the  manifold  of 
sense  becomes  the  unified  system  of  knowledge.  In  other  words, 
the  matter  of  knowledge  is  given  by  the  object,  the  form  by  the 
mind,  and  the  union  of  these  two  elements  is  knowledge.  But 
what  does  this  really  mean  ?  Is  this  unity  of  sense-data  knowl- 
edge ?  According  to  Kant  this  mental  construction  is  twice  re- 
moved from  reality,  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  knowledge  of  reality. 
If  it  is  knowledge  at  all,  it  must  be  knowledge  of  itself.  Let  us  now 
see  how  he  arrives  at  the  doctrine  of  the  subjectivity  of  knowl- 
edge. Things-in-themselves,  when  they  produce  a  percep- 
tion in  consciousness,  contribute  the  manifold  to  the  forms  of 
receptivity.  But  in  entering  sense  the  manifold  is  in  space 
and  time,  forms  which  did  not  originally  belong  to  it.  Conse- 
quently it  bears  no  resemblance  to  what  it  was  in  reality.  A 
further  transformation,  however,  occurs  when  the  forms  of  the  un- 
derstanding combine  these  data  into  a  unity.  Since  now  the  thing 
contributes  its  data  to  the  subject  by  which  they  are  categorized, 

''Ibid.,  I  347,  n. 


34  LOTZKS    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

this  union  of  matter  and  form  arises  zvithin  the  subject.  But  as 
this  union  of  elements  is  knowledge,  knowledge  itself  is  a  sub- 
jective appearance  within  the  subject.  It  is  nothing  but  a  state 
of  the  subject,  and  not  an  objective  account  of  reaUty.^  It  is  true 
that  the  subject,  being  self-conscious,  knows  this  state.  A  state 
of  the  subject  it  is,  however,  and  nothing  more.  The  subject  can- 
not get  beyond  his  own  states.  All  that  he  can  know  is  phenom- 
ena. Reality  he  cannot  know  ;  for  the  process  of  knowing  brings 
reality  within  the  subject,  where  it  is  transformed  into  a  state  of 
the  subject.  And  this  transformed  reality  is  no  longer  reality, 
nor  even  like  reality.  Now  it  is  this  transformed  reality  which  is 
known.  This  doctrine,  however,  is  self-contradictory,  for  it  de- 
clares reality  both  knowable  and  unknowable  at  the  same  time. 
Reality  is  known,  for  it  is  regarded  as  the  source  from  which  is 
obtained  the  matter  of  knowledge  ;  but  it  is  unknowable  because 
knowledge  is  within  the  subject.^ 

Presumably,  then,  on  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge,  if  the  matter 
of  knowledge  could  be  got  pure  and  just  as  it  is  in  the  object 
before  it  is  modified  by  the  forms  of  sensibility  and  understand- 
ing, reality  might  be  known.  But  since  all  finite  consciousness 
obtrudes  a  form  upon  the  matter,  the  data  are  so  transformed  that 
they  are  no  longer  like  the  thing  from  which  they  came  ;  and,  not 
being  a  copy  of  reality,  no  key  is  given  to  show  what  relation 
they  bear  to  reaUty.  Now,  this  doctrine  of  the  unknowability  of 
the  object  presupposes  :  (i)  a  false  and  abstract  distinction  be- 
tween form  and  matter ;  ^  (2)  the  view  that  appearance  only  is 
known,  at  least  directly  ;  *  (3)  the  dogma  that  if  reality  is  know- 
able,  it  can  be  known  only  indirectly  through  the  mediation 
of  appearance  which  must  be  an  identical  likeness  or  copy 
of  reality ;  ^  (4)  the  traditional  dualism,  which  Kant  accepted, 
between  subject  and  object.  The  three  first  objections  are 
logical,  the    fourth    is    metaphysical.     This    logical  position  is 

"^Gesch.  d.  Phil.,  ^36. 

^Ibid.,  \  25  ;   Cf.  also  Seth.  A  ;  Epistemology  in  Locke  and  Kant,  Phil.  Rev.,  II, 
pp.   172-186. 
3  Logik,  I  326. 
^Ibid.,  §312. 
^Ibid.,  ^304. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  35 

that  of  representative  perception.  On  this  view  appearance  is 
not  reality,  but  in  some  unknown  way  floats  before  reahty,  and 
perhaps  is  hke  reahty,  or  a  copy  of  it.  This  is  apparently  what 
Kant,  working  along  traditional  lines,  would  wish  to  make  appear- 
ance. Having,  however,  laid  aside  the  doctrine  of  the  tabula  rasa, 
according  to  which  the  mind  is  wholly  receptive  and  mirrors 
reality,  and,  further,  having  adopted  the  notion  of  the  activity  of 
consciousness,  Kant  is  impelled  to  the  position  that  appearance  is 
a  compound  of  form  and  matter,  and  neither  like  things-in-them- 
selves  which  contribute  the  matter,  nor  like  the  mind  which 
furnished  the  form.^  Knowledge  of  the  ego  or  of  the  mind  is 
equally  impossible.  Consequently,  the  only  object  of  knowl- 
edge is  appearance.  Kant's  metaphysical  position  likewise  makes 
knowledge  of  reality  impossible.  He  accepted  the  dualism  of 
subject  and  object,  and  thereby  so  ordered  his  concepts  that 
reality  is  unknowable. 

Lotze's  answer  to  Kant,  therefore,  consists  of  the  following 
propositions:  (i)  RealityMs  not  unknowable;  (2)  appearance  is 
the  knowledge  of  reality  ;  (3)  there  is  no  dualism  between  subject 
and  object  (this  last  proposition  will  be  discussed  in  Chapter  HI). 

Lotze  rejects  Kant's  agnosticism.  "The  theory,"  he  says, 
"  for  which  the  adherents  of  the  popular  philosophy  of  the  Kan- 
tian school  become  enthusiastic  is  quite  untenable  because  it  holds 
that  only  phenomena  are  perceived,  and  that  the  reality,  which 
corresponds  to  these  phenomena,  has  not  the  least  analogy  to  the 
relations  which  exist  between  the  different  parts  of  these  phe- 
nomena."- Lotze  goes  beyond  Kant  and  maintains  that  reality 
is  not  unknowable  ;  on  the  contrary,  reality  is  known.  It  ap- 
pears in  perception  and  in  thought  to  the  subject,  and  is  not  con- 
cealed by  its  representation.^  The  existence  of  reality  is  necessary 
for  logical  theory ;  it  is  also  a  logical  demand  that  reality  is 
known.  Even  Kant's  philosophy  implied  reality,  though  it  could 
not  be  known  because  Kant  made  it  unknowable.* 

iZo^//C',??  322-333. 
«  Gesch.  d.  Phil.,  \  25. 

3Cf.  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  322,  349  ff.,  629,  697  ;   Met.,  \\  47,  90,  93,   97  ;   Logik,  l\ 
325-358,  359  ;   Gr.  d.  Met.,  Part  III. 
*Cf.  Jacobi  :    Werke,  II,  p.  304. 


36  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  demand  not  only  for  the  existence  of 
reahty,  but  also  for  a  knowledge  of  it.  If  we  know,  we  know 
something,  some  reality.  But  Kant's  system  made  no  provision 
for  this  knowledge,  and  allows  only  a  cognition  of  appearance. 
Appearance  could  be  known,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  was  known, 
but  it  contributed  nothing  to  knowledge  of  reality.  Further, 
thought  might  elaborate  appearance  and  reduce  it  to  scientific 
precision,  and  arrange  it  under,  and  comprehend  it  by,  concepts  ; 
but  in  all  this  labor  and  refinement  it  got  no  nearer  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  reality.  The  logical  mind  might  have  been  content  with 
this  lack  of  knowledge  had  it  not  been  conscious  all  the  while  that 
there  is  reality,  and  that  it  knows  reality.  Philosophy  cannot 
dictate  what  is  knowable  and  what  is  unknowable,  but  has 
the  much  humbler  duty  of  making  intelligible  and  deepening 
our  comprehension  of  the  things  which  we  already  know.  So 
it  is  in  this  case ;  the  Kantian  conclusions  did  not  satisfy  the  de- 
mands of  consciousness,  and  further  attempts  were  made  to  get  a 
theory  of  knowledge  which  would  take  account  of  reality  and 
the  thing-in-itself 

Though  there  was  the  evidence  of  consciousness  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  reaUty,  there  seemed  to  be  no  logical  justification  of  it. 
Moreover,  the  conclusions  which  denied  a  knowledge  of  reality 
seemed  fairly  drawn,  and  there  appeared  to  be  no  resource  left 
but  to  admit  the  impossibility  of  knowing  the  real  world.  It 
must,  indeed,  be  admitted  so  long  as  the  presuppositions  on 
which  this  conclusion  rests  are  maintained,  so  long  as  subject 
and  object  belong  to  different  worlds,  and  so  long  as  appearance 
alone  is  known,  that  of  course  there  is  possible  no  knowledge 
of  the  reality  which  lies  behind  appearance. 

II.  So  far  we  have  discussed  the  thesis  which  Lotze  found 
current  in  the  philosophy  of  his  time — '  Appearance  is  not 
reality  and  gives  no  knowledge  of  reality.'  The  antithesis  main- 
tained by  Hegel  and  his  followers  asserts  that  '  appearance  is 
reality,  and  that  the  knowledge  of  appearance  is  the  knowl- 
edge of  reality.'  Kant's  successors  were  not  content  with  his 
doctrine  of  the  unknowability  of  reality.  Kant,  it  seemed  to 
them,   first  divided  the  world  into  two  parts,  appearance  and 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  17 

reality,  and  then  tried  to  put  it  together  again,  but  found  this 
task  impossible  because  the  elements  used  in  the  reconstruction 
of  the  cosmos  had  been  reduced  to  abstractions  by  the  act  of 
separating  them.  Appearance  should  not  be  separated  from 
reality,  for  if  this  division  is  made  there  is  no  means  of  passing 
from  a  knowledge  of  appearance  to  a  knowledge  of  reality.  The 
only  way  out  of  this  difficulty  is  to  deny  that  there  is  any  reality 
behind  appearance.  This  difficulty,  to  be  sure,  only  arises  if  we 
begin  with  Kant's  presuppositions  ;  but,  if  we  start  with  these  pre- 
suppositions, the  only  logical  course  is  to  remove  the  world  of 
things-in-themselves.^  Lotze  who  was  conscious  of  the  contra- 
diction contained  in  the  conception  of  unknowable  things-in-them- 
selves  remarks  :  "  Later  Idealism  was  therefore  consistent  in  re- 
nouncing completely  the  thought  of  a  world  of  things  which  are 
to  serve  as  the  transcendental  objects  of  our  knowledge.  So 
long,  however,  as  we  agree  with  Kant  in  opposing  the  objects  of 
sense  or  phenomena  to  things-in-themselves  or  noumena,  we  are 
compelled  to  assert  of  noumena  that  they  are  at  least  that  which 
appears.  Furthermore,  we  cannot  avoid  regarding  these  things- 
in-themselves  as  the  operative  causes  which  produce  perceptions 
in  us,  and  we  must  assert  of  them  by  all  means  then,  plurality 
and  manifold  relations  between  the  many,  on  which  alone  the 
variety,  manifoldness,  and  succession  of  our  perceptions  depend."^ 
But  Lotze  immediately  goes  on  to  declare  this  view  untenable,  and 
holds  that  there  is  no  basis  for  the  doctrine  that  we  know  mere 
appearance  and  that  reality  remains  behind  it  unknown.  The 
logical  course  is  to  deny  things-in-themselves,  and  this  is  what 
was  done  by  Post-Kantians.  There  is  nothing  beyond  appear- 
ance, this  school  maintains.  Properly  understood,  appearance  is 
reality,  and  therefore  when  appearance  is  known  reality  is  known, 
for  the  one  is  the  other,  and  there  is  no  hiatus  between  them. 
The  understanding  makes  nature,  but  in  a  deeper  sense  than 
Kant  meant,  and  the  Post-Kantians  sought  to  bring  out  this 
deeper  meaning  in  mental  creation  by  substituting  the  term 
'reason'    for    'understanding.'       For    Kant    the    understanding 

'  Cf.  Seth,  A.,  The  Epistemology  of  Neo-Kantiatiism,  Phil.  Rev.,  II,  pp.  293-315, 
2  Gesch.  d.  Phil.,  ^25. 


38  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

makes  phenomenal  nature,  but  for  the  Post-Kantians  reason 
makes  reality  itself,  for  reason  is  reality,  and  its  logical  categories 
are  the  metaphysical  laws  and  principles  of  reality. 

The  expression  '  appearance  is  reality '  needs  a  word  of  expla- 
nation. If  appearance  means  nothing  more  than  the  presenta- 
tions that  flit  before  our  gaze,  or  in  our  imagination,  then  we 
admit  that  no  one  outside  of  the  school  of  Berkeley  and  Hume 
has  ever  held  such  a  doctrine.  If  the  esse  of  things  is  percipi, 
and  if  the  percipi  is  appearance,  then  Post-Kantian  philosophers 
do  not  maintain  that  appearance  is  reality.  But  since  the  Critique  of 
Pure  Reason  was  published,  the  mere  'bundle  of  ideas'  is  not  all  that 
is  meant  by  appearance.  The  appearance  which  Kant  opposed  to 
reality  is  not  a  mere  group  or  series  of  disconnected  presentations  ; 
on  the  contrary,  appearance  is  the  tissue  of  categorized  sense-data 
constructed  by  the  concepts  of  the  understanding.  It  is  the 
product  of  form  and  matter  which  is  appearance  or  phenome- 
non. In  this  sense  appearance  is  the  whole  world  of  knowledge 
which  consists  of  the  judgments  of  experience,^  and  is  not  the 
mere  show-world  of  sense  as  is  often  supposed.  It  is  true, 
however,  that  experience  includes  the  visible  world,  for  the  visible 
world  exists  only  as  a  construction  of  the  understanding,  but  to 
maintain  that  this  is  the  only  world  given  in  sense-perception,  and 
in  the  concepts  of  thought,  would  be  a  wrong  limitation.  For 
Kant  the  understanding  makes  nature,  and  this  nature  is  a  system 
of  judgments — judgments  of  experience.  Appearance  is  this 
mental  construction,  or  continued  judgment  of  experience.^  Ap- 
pearance is  what  the  mind  has  made  out  of  the  data  given  in 
sense,  and  it  is  everything  that  is  present  to  the  understanding. 
Appearance,  then,  we  may  regard  as  man's  mental  construct.^ 

It  may  seem  that  we  are  taking  an  unwarranted  liberty  with 
terms  in  defining  appearance  as  a  mental  construction.  But  as 
we  have  tried  to  show,  this  conception  follows  logically  from 
Kant's  own  position.  We  wish  to  use  this  mode  of  expression 
because  it  seems  to  bring  out  clearly  what  Lotze's  problem  was, 

1  Kant  :   Proleg.  to  Met.,  §  i8. 

^Cf.  Bosanquet's  conception  of  nature  :     Logic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  76-79. 

3  Windelband  :    Gesch.  d.  Phil.  (Eng.  Trans. ),  p.  573. 


THE  APPEARANCE    OF  REALITY.  39 

and  how  he  solved  it.  Moreover,  it  is  obvious  that  only  an  arbi- 
trary distinction  can  be  drawn  between  the  narrower  and  the 
wider  use  of  this  concept,  and  to  draw  a  distinction  where  none 
need  be  drawn,  is  as  great  a  source  of  error  as  the  wider  use 
of  the  term.  That  only  a  logical  division  exists  is  plain  on 
an  examination  of  mental  phenomena.  For  Kant  appearance 
is  a  mental  construction.  Now  grant  that  this  means  that  only ' 
the  sense-object  (so-called)  is  the  mental  construction  which 
is  called  appearance  ;  yet  even  this  object  itself  is  the  work  of 
the  categories,  and  is  therefore  more  than  an  object  of  mere  sense. 
Already  the  distinction  is  broken  down,  and  we  feel  still  more  the 
arbitrariness  of  this  division  if  we  endeavor  to  distinguish  the  ob- 
ject as  mental  construction  from  our  thoughts  about  the  object  as 
also  a  mental  construction,  for  if  we  separate  them,  both  the  ob- 
ject and  our  thought  about  the  object  are  mental  constructions, 
and  it  is  not  at  all  apparent  how  any  distinction  can  be  main- 
tained. In  this  case  the  object  and  our  thought  of  the  object  are 
the  same.  Appearance  is  reality,  or  to  use  the  more  common 
phrase,  in  a  certain  sense,  thought  and  reality  are  one. 

This  doctrine  that  there  is  no  thing-in-itself  behind  appearance, 
makes  the  theory  of  knowledge  intelligible  ;  so  the  Post-Kantians 
taught.  Since  appearance  is  reality,  so  soon  as  we  have  knowl- 
edge of  appearance  we  have  knowledge  of  reality.  There  is 
therefore  no  demand  to  get  behind  appearance  ;  that  is  an  im- 
possible as  well  as  a  fruitless  undertaking,  for  our  mental  con- 
struction, which  is  our  knowledge,  is  the  real.  That  which 
thought  thinks  is  reality,  but  reality  is  appearance.^  "  The  '  phe- 
nomenon '  is  for  Kant  a  human  mode  of  representation,  for  Hegel 
an  objective  externalizing  of  the  Absolute  Spirit."^ 

The  thing-in-itself  for  Hegel  is  not  reality  as  it  is  for  Kant, 
but  only  the  Aiisich,  the  thing  in  embryo.  It  is  /«  appearance.^ 
"  Idealism  opposes  to  the  realistic  acknowledgement  of  the  un- 
knowable nature  of  thing,  the  bold  assertion  that  thought  and 
being  are  identical."^     Although  this  does  not  mean  explicitly 

•  Hegel  :  Encyk.,  \  22  ;    IVerke,  VI,  pp.   42  f. 
2\Vindelband  :  op.  cit.,  p.  61 1,  n.  3. 
^  Encyk.,  I  74;   Werke,  VI,  pp.  141-143. 
*Mikr.,  II,  351. 


40  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

that  finite  cognition  "  will  sometime  succeed  in  penetrating  by 
thought  the  existence  of  all  things,  and  recreating  it  in  idea,"  it 
does,  however,  maintain  that  so  far  as  human  cognition  goes,  it 
reveals  the  very  nature  of  reality.  Human  thought  uses  the 
same  categories  which  exist  in  real  things,  and  this  theory  of 
knowledge  holds  that  the  depths  of  reality  can  be  explored.  For 
a  finite  being  to  pretend  to  do  this  seems  to  Lotze  presumption, 
"yet,"  he  says,  "to  do  all  this  was  just  what  was  promised  by 
the  bold  and  striking  expression  given  to  the  proposition  which 
made  being  identical  with  thinking ;  it  led  one  to  expect  that  just 
that  by  which  being  as  being  seemed  at  first  to  be  irreconcilably 
differentiated  from  thinking  or  from  being  thought,  would  finally 
be  presented  as  a  vanishing  distinction,  and  that  this  being  would 
be  altogether  resolved  into  thoughts."^  This  idealism  is  not 
satisfied  with  general  outHnes  of  reality,  but  endeavors  to  see  all 
things  s?ib  specie  aeternitatis.  As  Lotze  is  fond  of  saying,  this 
philosophy  would  represent  everything  as  it  is  in  relation  to  the 
center,  and  will  not  accept  a  partial  or  periphery  knowledge  of 
things.  "  With  Reinhold,  and  chiefly  through  Fichte,  arose  the 
prejudice  that  every  true  science,  and  especially  philosophy 
must  start  out  from  one  single  principle  T"^  Again  Lotze  says: 
"  Idealism,  the  most  familiar  form  of  which  is  found  in  Hegel's 
philosophy,  is  driven  naturally  in  a  direction  away  from  realism. 
.  .  .  Beginning  with  the  prime  truth  that  the  world  is  a  whole,  ' 
all  of  whose  parts  depend  upon  a  single  governing  idea,  this  ideal- 
ism can  find  an  interest  only  in  beholding  all  things  in  the  Abso- 
lute, i.  e.,  in  seeking  for  the  meaning  which  they  possess  for  the 
realization  of  the  idea  in  which  alone  they  have  their  ground  and 
function."* 

Lotze's  contention  is  that  absolute  idealism  deifies  human 
cognition,  and  takes  human  concepts  as  the  actual  forms  of  real- 
ity. He  himself,  however,  maintains  that  "  the  name  '  concept  ' 
does  not  seem  to  deserve  in  logic  that  exalted  significance  which 
the  school  of  Hegel  has  given  it,  and  in  which  it  claims  to  ex- 

^Mikr.,  II,  352. 

2  Gesch.  d.  Ph.,   §  34. 

^  Med.  Psy.,  pp.  156,  157. — Cf.  Logik,  |  150. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  4 1 

press  the  knowledge  of  tlie  essential  nature  of  the  object."  * 
How  the  concept  was  deified,  and  used  as  an  ontological  prin- 
ciple, instead  of  retaining  its  methodological  use,  we  will  now  en- 
deavor to  show.  This  discussion  will  reveal  Lotze's  chief  objec- 
tion to  Hegelian  idealism. 

As  we  have  tried  to  show,  some  Post-Kantians,  of  whom  we 
may  take  Hegel  as  a  representative,  did  not  distinguish  between 
appearance  and  reality.  They  dropped  the  doctrine  of  the  thing- 
in-itself,  and  affirmed  that  appearance  is  reality.  Reality  is  a 
system  of  reason  ;  appearance  is  the  same,  and  this  identity  of 
thought  and  reality  makes  knowledge  possible.  It  does  not 
matter,  they  claim,  whether  we  distinguish  between  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Idea,  and  that  of  each  finite  spirit ;  for  in  so  far  as 
each  is  rational,  there  really  is  no  distinction.  The  fiitite  in  so  far  as 
it  is  rational  is  universal  or  infinite,  and  in  the  perception  of  truth 
finite  and  infinite  agree.  Just  as  the  Idea  develops  through  a 
system  of  concepts  organic  to  each  other,  so  the  finite  conscious- 
ness, when  it  labors  dialectically,  rises  through  the  same  stages 
as  mark  the  progess  of  the  Absolute,  till  it  reaches  the  Idea  it- 
self. "  From  the  outset  he  [Hegel]  looked  on  the  motion  of 
our  thought  in  its  efforts  to  gain  a  clear  idea  of  this  still  obscure 
goal  of  our  aspiration  as  the  proper  inward  development  of  the 
Absolute  itself,  which  only  needed  to  be  pursued  consistently,  in 
order  gradually  to  bring  into  consciousness  all  that  the  universe 
contains."  "  Since,  now,  the  human  mind  reproduces  the  Abso- 
lute, appearance  is  reality,  and  it  cannot  be  anything  else.  A 
further  result  of  this  doctrine  is  that  the  principles  which  man 
uses  in  his  construction  of  appearance  are  identical  with  those 
present  in  reality,  or  in  the  mind  of  the  Idea.*  This  means  that 
man's  concepts  are  constitutive  principles  of  reality,  and  recon- 
struct reality  in  his  own  experience.  These  principles,  therefore, 
are  much  more  than  the  methodological  concepts  by  means  of 
which  a  knowing  mind  arranges  its  experience  for  the  purpose  of 
intelligible  treatment  and  communication.  They  are  ontological 
concepts  in  the  full  intent  of  the  word. 

^Logik,  ^27. 
^Met.,  §88. 

^  Lotze,  however,  does  not  admit  that  the  Hegelian  Idea  is  a  person.  Med.  Psy., 
P-  157- 


42  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Some  notion  of  the  ontological  nature  of  these  concepts,  as 
Lotze  interprets  Hegel,  becomes  plain  when  we  glance  at  the 
task  which  Hegel  set  himself  in  his  Wissenschaft  der  Logik. 
Starting  with  the  idea  that  reality  is  a  unity  of  organic  concepts, 
Hegel  believed  that  one  concept  contained  implicitly  all  the  rest. 
If,  now,  thought  grasps  one  concept,  it  will  gradually  unfold  from 
it,  whole  and  entire,  the  complete  universe  of  concepts.  If,  now, 
this  were  completed,  it  would  be  the  actual  concept-system  of  re- 
ality, and  every  concept  would  possess  its  actual  worth.  For  a  per- 
fect intelligence  this  is  possible  ;  but  how  can  man,  by  the  energy 
and  scrutiny  of  reason,  pass  through  the  same  development  as  the 
Idea  followed  ?  Man  undoubtedly  does  rise  a  certain  distance  in 
this  dialectic,  but  he  must  remember  that  his  concepts  are  very 
imperfect.  Were  he,  however,  to  demand  that  his  knowledge 
should  not  cease  till  it  reached  that  of  the  Idea,  he  must  maintain 
that  all  his  concepts  have  the  same  denotation  and  connotation  as 
have  the  concepts  of  an  absolute  intelligence.  Such  concepts  are 
constitutive ;  but  if  they  are  less  than  this  they  are  methodo- 
logical. 

Whether  this  is  a  correct  exposition  of  Hegelian  philosophy  does 
not  matter  for  our  purpose.  But  that  Lotze  interprets  Hegel  in 
this  way  seems  very  evident  from  the  passages  in  which  he  criti- 
cises Hegel,  and  also  from  his  general  attitude  towards  absolute 
ideahsm.  Moreover,  Lotze's  criticisms  of  the  Post-Kantians  can 
best  be  understood  if  the  above  is  regarded  as  his  interpretation. 
As  we  have  attempted  to  show,  according  to  Lotze's  comprehension 
of  Hegel,  the  great  apostle  of  absolute  idealism  regards  reason  as 
the  real  principle  of  the  cosmos,  or  even  the  cosmos  itself  Any 
being,  therefore,  who  possesses  reason  is  able  to  reconstruct  re- 
ality in  his  own  experience,  and,  furthermore,  if  this  being  is  a 
philosopher  and  uses  the  dialectic  method,  he  can  begin  with  any 
concept  of  his  experience  and  reconstruct  the  totality  of  reality,  thus 
reaching  the  point  of  view  of  the  Idea,  from  which  he  can  behold 
the  cosmos  from  the  center,  and  see  it  in  its  true  proportions  just 
as  it  appears  to  deity. ^     The  thinking  of  reality,  therefore,  repro- 

^  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  351-360;  Logik,  Introd.,  §  IX,  also  H  20,  27;  Med.  Psy., 
pp.  151-160;    Geschichte  d.  Aesthetik,  pp.  16S-185. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  43 

duces  it  or  creates  it.  The  concepts  of  such  knowledge  are  the 
very  concepts  in  reaHty,  the  identical  principles  and  laws  of  re- 
ality ;  they  are  reality  itself.  These  concepts,  therefore,  are  on- 
tological  or  metaphysical,  not  subjective  and  methodological,  and 
express  absolute,  not  relative,  truth. 

III.  Let  us  now  sum  up  this  discussion,  and  state  the  results 
of  these  two  opposite  points  of  view  as  they  appear  to  Lotze, 
For  Kant,  appearance  is  a  mental  construction  consisting  of  form 
and  matter,  the  former  element  contributed  by  the  mind,  the 
latter  by  the  object.  This  intellectual  construct  is  known,  and 
it  is  all  that  is  known.  The  reality  which  provides  the  a  posteriori 
matter  is  wholly  unlike  the  construct  and  is  unknowable.  For 
Hegel  and  his  school,  on  the  other  hand,  this  mental  construct  is 
known,  and  it  is  all  that  is  known.  But  beyond  this  synthesis 
there  is  no  thing-in -itself  or  reality.  The  only  reality  is  the  syn- 
thesis of  form  and  matter,  and  this  synthesis  is  at  once  both  the  thing 
known  and  the  knowledge  of  it.  Thus  both  Kant  and  the  Hegelian 
school  agree  that  we  know  appearance  and  appearance  only  ;  but 
whereas  Kant  maintains  that  there  is  an  unknowable  object  behind 
phenomena,  the  Hegelians  contend  that  knowledge  and  reality 
are  one,  and  that  we  know  reality  just  as  it  is.  Now,  from  Lotze's 
point  of  view,  both  these  theories  express  a  truth  partially,  and 
both  are  one-sided.  Kant  is  right  when  he  upholds  the  doctrine 
that  appearance  is  a  mental  construction,  but  is  not  reality.  He 
errs,  however,  when  he  concludes  that  reality  is  therefore  un- 
knowable. On  the  other  hand,  Hegelians  are  justified  in  main- 
taining that  appearance  is  an  intellectual  synthesis,  and  that  reality 
is  known.  But  it  is  too  much  to  affirm  that  human  cognition  is 
reality,  or  even  an  absolute  knowledge  of  reality.  Furthermore, 
a  comparison  of  these  two  theories  of  knowledge  makes  it  evi- 
dent that  they  agree  in  maintaining  that  appearance  is  an  intellec- 
tual construction  ;  and  that  it  is  appearance  that  is  known. ^ 

>  It  may  be  asserted  that  this  is  an  impossible  view,  and  that  Kant  and  Hegel  did 
not  hold  it ;  for  appearance,  it  is  said,  has  a  meaning  only  when  contrasted  with  reality. 
Now  we  admit  that  the  idea  of  appearance  implies  the  idea  of  reality.  But  this  ap- 
parent contradiction  is  easily  removed  by  a  change  of  term.  Instead  of  the  word  ap- 
pearance use  '  nature,'  as  Kant  did,  or  '  reality,'  as  did  Post-Kantians,  and  no  contra- 
diction arises — not  that  the  contradiction  is  not  really  present,  but  the  terms  are  so 
selected  that  there  does  not  appear  to  be  a  contradiction. 


44  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Neither  of  these  doctrines  seemed  satisfactory  to  Lotze.  If  the 
Kantian  Critique  robbed  knowledge  of  all  significance,  and  made 
reality  unknowable,  the  Hegelian  system  raised  human  cognition 
to  the  skies,  and  actually  deified  it.  If  the  former  regarded  man 
as  mentally  impotent,  the  latter  gave  him  omniscient  penetration 
into  the  essence  of  reality.  It  is  Lotze' s  purpose  to  mediate  be- 
tween these  two  opposite  theories. 

IV.  Lotze's  criticism  of  Kantian  and  of  absolute  idealism  brings 
out  his  own  conception  of  knowledge,  and  this  is  the  reason 
why  it  seems  necessary  to  devote  so  much  attention  to  it.  From 
this  point  his  criticism  is  constructive,  though  it  is  based  on  the 
discussion  of  the  theories  already  examined,  and  may  be  stated  in 
two  propositions,  each  of  which  will  be  considered  in  turn  :  (i)  ap- 
pearance is  not  like  reahty,  but  is  knowledge  about  reality  ;  (2) 
the  concepts  used  in  knowledge  are  not  the  metaphysical 
principles  of  reality,  but  man's  way  of  interpreting   the  world. 

Appearance  is  our  knowledge  about  reality.  The  critical 
philosophy,  and  especially  its  later  forms,  being  unable  to  get 
from  appearance  to  reality,  denied  the  existence  of  everything 
outside  of  appearance.^  But  according  to  Lotze  knowledge  is 
not  confined  to  appearance,  but  comprehends  reality.  Reality  is 
knozvji  in  appearance?  Phenomena  are  not^  things,  nor  are  they 
hke  things.^  On  the  contrary,  phenomena  are  an  interpretation 
of  things.  "  Phenomena  are,  nevertheless,  always  phenomena 
of  something  or  other, /i?r  some  subject  or  other."  *  Appearance 
is  the  mental  construction  or  knowledge  which  the  subject  has  of 
the  object ;  and  there  is  really  no  question  as  to  whether  appear- 
ance is  like  or  unlike  the  object.  Such  a  question  should  not 
arise,  for  the  very  question  implies  that  knoivledge  of  an  object  is 
like  the  object.  But  how  can  knowledge  be  compared  with  a 
thing  ?  There  is,  indeed,  an  "  opposition  between  the  object  of 
our  knowledge  and  our  knowledge  of  that  object."  ^     But  sup- 

1  The  category  of  the  Ding-an-Sich  is  retained,  but  it  is  put  within  appearance. 
Hegel,   Werke,  VI,  pp.  141-143  ;  Encyk. ,  §  74. 
2Cf.  Erdmann  :  oJ>.  cit.,  \  347,    II. 
3  Logik,  §  316. 
*Ibid.,  §304. 

5  Gr.  d.  Met.,  |  33  ;   Cf.  Mikr.,  II,  pp,  157,  160, 
^  Logik,  Introd.,  ^  XIII. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  45 

pose  tliat  knowledge  resembles  its  object.  The  consciousness, 
therefore,  which  perceives  this  resemblance  must  know  the  ob- 
ject, and  also  the  knowledge  of  the  object.  In  this  case,  how- 
ever, the  object  is  known  independently  of  the  knowing  of  it. 

At  the  basis  of  all  this  confusion  is  tiie  doctrine,  however  much 
it  may  be  disguised,  that  wc  know  knowledge.  To  know  ap- 
pearance and  to  know  knowledge  is  the  same  thing,  for  appear- 
ance, as  understood  by  Kant,  included  "  the  whole  compass  of 
human  knowledge."  Though  the  word  appearance  may  not  always 
have  been  used  for  the  whole  mental  interpretation  of  reality, 
still  this  mental  construction,  this  one  continuous  judgment,  is 
what  appearance  really  is.  This  continuous  judgment  is  just  the 
\vay  in  which  reality  appears  to  us.  Therefore  it  is  our  knowl- 
edge of  reality.  For  this  reason  we  do  not  first  know  appear- 
ance, and  then  reality.  The  truth  is,  we  do  not  know  appearance 
in  any  case ;  but  what  we  do  know  is  reality,  and  appeara?icc  is 
our  knou'ledge  of  reality. 

This  point  is  so  important  that  it  must  be  discussed  further, 
even  at  the  risk  of  tediousness.  We  desire  to  show  more  fully 
that  knowledge  or  appearance  is  a  mental  construction  of  reality. 
It  is  knowledge  <?/" reality  or  an  appearance  of  objects.  In  think- 
ing— and  by  this  term  I  include  all  the  activities  of  the  self — re- 
ality is  known.  For  Lotze  this  is  a  postulate,  and  it  is  not  given 
us  to  understand  how  a  mental  construction  can  be  knowledge 
of  reality.  "  We  assume  that  the  process  of  thinking  is  deter- 
mined so  as  to  lead  to  the  knowledge  of  the  true  nature  of 
things."  ^  Now  this  knowledge  which  consciousness  constructs 
is  appearance,  or,  to  use  a  phase  commoner  in  Lotze's  writings, 
a  system  of  ideas. 

Reality  can  be  known  only  in  ideas.  Things  cannot  enter 
into  consciousness  and  be  known  before  they  are  known  in  ideas, 
"It  is  indeed  even  incomprehensible  how  the  intuition  of  a  present 
thing  should  make  me  know  this  thing  as  it  is  in  itself,  as  its 
properties  cannot  migrate  into  my  faculty  of  representation."  ^ 
Even  though   things  could  actually  come  into  the  mind,  they 

1  Gr.  d.  Logik,  I  5. 

2  Kant :   Proleg.,  I  9. 


46  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

would  not  be  known  until  they  appeared.^  Our  ideas  are  our 
knowledge  of  things,  and  the  only  knowledge  we  can  have,  and 
in  order  to  make  this  plain  "  we  have  to  show  that  nothing  else 
but  the  connection  of  our  ideas  can  ever  be  made  the  object 
of  our  investigations."  -  Our  knowledge  is  a  continuous  judg- 
ment about  reality,  or  a  system  of  ideas  about  reality.  "  All  we 
know  of  the  external  world  depends  upon  the  ideas  of  it  which 
are  within  us  ;  it  is  so  far  entirely  indifferent  whether  with  Ideal- 
ism, we  deny  the  existence  of  that  world,  and  regard  our  ideas  of 
it  as  above  reality,  or  whether  we  maintain  with  Realism  the  ex- 
istence of  things  outside  us  which  act  upon  our  minds.  On  the 
latter  hypothesis  as  little  as  on  the  former  do  the  things  themselves 
pass  into  our  knowledge  ;  they  only  awaken  in  us  ideas,  which 
are  not  Things."  ^  Though  we  know  the  external  object  in  ideas, 
it  is  impossible  to  compare  our  ideas  with  reality  in  order  to  see 
if  they  are  true.  "  It  is  not  this  assumed  external  world  of  the 
Real  which  comes  in  here  between  our  ideas  as  the  standard  by 
which  their  truth  is  to  be  measured  :  the  standard  is  always  the 
conception  of  which  we  cannot  get  rid,  of  what  such  a  world 
must  be  if  it  does  exist ;  is  always,  that  is  to  say,  a  thought  in  our 
own  minds."*  In  knowledge  it  is  not  possible  to  go  outside  of 
our  ideas  and  learn  what  reality  is  like  without  knowing  it.  Not 
only  are  we  confined  to  the  circle  of  knowledge,  but  every  cri- 
tique of  knowledge  and  all  criteria  of  knowledge  are  within  and 
immanent,  never  external  and  transcendent.^  This  point  has 
been  worked  out  so  admirably  by  Bosanquet  that  is  no  need  to 
dwell  further  upon  it  here.  But  whereas  Bosanquet  identifies 
knowledge — not  necessarily  the  individual's  knowledge,  but  the 
knowledge  of  the  universal — and  reality,^  Lotze  distinguishes 
them  and  regards  the  continuous  judgment  of  consciousness  as 
the  individual's  knowledge  of  reality,  and  not  reality  itself  Re- 
ality is  not  made  or  unmade  by  knowing  it :  it  is  quite  different 

1  Logik,  I  308. 

^Ibid.,  I  306,  Cf.  also  ?J  3,  153,  315,  355. 

*Ibid.,  I  306. 

s  Ibid.,  §  322. 

^  Logik,  I,  pp.  3  ff.,  41  ff.,  76  ff. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  47 

from  knowledge.  Nevertheless  reality  is  known.  It  appears  to 
consciousness  as  a  continuous  judgment.  In  saying  that  a  thing 
appears  all  that  is  really  meant  is  that  it  is  known.  That  we 
can  only  know  a  thing  in  appearance  has  been  considered  a  de- 
fect of  the  human  mind,  a  defect  which  higher  intelligences  do 
not  share. ^  On  the  contrary,  Lotze  maintains  that  there  is  no 
knowledge  apart  from  appearance.  "  We  may  exalt  the  intelli- 
gence of  more  perfect  beings  above  our  own  as  high  as  we 
please  ;  but  so  long  as  we  desire  to  attach  any  rational  meaning 
to  it,  it  must  always  fall  under  some  category  of  knowledge  or 
direct  perception,  or  cognition,  that  is  to  say  it  will  never  be  the 
thing  itself  but  only  an  aggregate  of  ideas  about  the  thing."  ^ 

A  comparison  of  this  theory  of  knowledge  with  skepticism  serves 
to  show  its  real  nature.  So  long  as  ideas  are  taken  as  copies  or 
symbols  of  things-in-themselves,  a  doubt  may  be  raised  whether 
they  really  give  us  knowledge  about  reality ;  but  if  ideas  are  al- 
ready knozvledge  about  reality,  then  there  is  no  meaning  in  imag- 
ining that  they  may  not  give  us  knowledge  of  things  :  for  in  this 
latter  case  we  know  things  so  soon  as  we  have  ideas  of  them. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  can  have  ideas  before  they  are  ideas  of 
a  thing,  then  there  is  a  serious  doubt  as  to  whether  we  can  ever 
know  the  thing.  If,  however,  skepticism  "  indulges  the  appre- 
hension that  everything  may  be  in  reality  quite  different  from 
what  it  necessarily  appears,"  it  "sets  out  with  a  self-contradic- 
tion, because  it  silently  takes  for  granted  the  possibility  of  an 
apprehension  which  does  not  apprehend  things,  but  is  itself 
things,  and  then  goes  on  to  question  whether  this  impossible  per- 
fection is  allotted  to  our  intelligence."^ 

The  point  of  view  which  we  have  endeavored  to  set  forth  has 
been  put  in  a  curt  sentence  :  '  We  only  know  phenomena.'  But, 
like  many  another  concise  statement,  this  one  is  easily  misunder- 
stood, and  gives  a  wrong  emphasis  to  the  object  of  knowledge. 
For  these  reasons  Lotze  justly  objects  to  it.     He  says  :  "I  avoid 

*  Cf.  Kant' s  notion  of  the  limitations  of  man' s  knowledge,  and  of  the  Intcllectuelle 
Anschauuug  of  God.  Werke  (Hartenstein's  ed. ),  Vol.  Ill,  p.  79;  Kr.  d.  r.  V. 
(2d  Ed.),  pp.  67,  68. 

» Lo};ik,  \  308. 

^Ibid.,  §309. 


48  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

that  particular  form  of  statement  because  it  still  contains  a  preju- 
dice which  I  should  wish  to  see  abandoned.  .  .  .  The  proposi- 
tion plainly  carries  the  idea  of  a  thwarted  purpose.  That  '  only  ' 
implies  that  our  knowledge  which  was  intended  by  rights  for  the 
apprehension  of  the  higher,  the  essence  of  things,  has  to  be  con- 
tent with  the  lower,  the  phenomenon.  .  .  .  But  we  can  see  at 
once  that  it  is  an  arbitrary  proceeding  to  place  knowledge  in  the 
position  of  a  means  which  is  Jiot  adequate  to  its  supposed  end  of 
apprehending  things  as  they  are."  ^  Returning  to  our  own  way 
of  interpreting  Lotze,  we  would  say  that  the  statement :  '  We 
only  know  phenomena,'  does  not  say  what  is  meant.  It  is  meant 
to  say  we  know  objects  ojily  in  phenomena.  We  cannot  really 
know  phenomena,  for  phenomena  are  our  mental  constructions, 
or  our  knowledge  of  things.  We  only  know  things,  but  we 
know  them  only  in  phenomena.  The  latter  clause  only  repeats 
the  former,  for  both  have  the  same  meaning :  for  to  know 
anything  is  to  know  it  in  phenomena.  Thus  it  is  clear  what 
Lotze  means  when  he  says  "  that  nothing  else  but  the  connection 
of  our  ideas  with  each  other  can  ever  be  made  the  object  of  our 
investigations."  ^  His  meaning  is  that  we  can  never  get  outside 
of  knowledge  ;  in  our  logical  studies  we  cannot  step  outside  of 
our  own  ideas  and  look  on  the  process  from  without.  No  ex- 
ternal criticism  is  possible,  knowledge  is  its  own  critic.^  Nor  is 
metaphysic  or  any  other  sphere  of  knowledge  an  exception.  To 
get  outside  of  knowledge,  or  outside  of  appearance,  is  not  to  pos- 
sess divine  knowledge,  it  is  simply  to  be  ignorant. 

Appearance,  therefore,  is  not  reality,  it  is  of  reality.  Knowl- 
edge is  not  reality,  it  is  of  reality.  "  Nothing  is  simpler  than  to 
convince  ourselves  that  every  apprehending  intelligence  can  only 
see  things  as  they  look  to  it  when  it  perceives  them  ;  he  who 
demands  a  knowledge  which  should  be  more  then  a  perfectly 
connected  and  consistent  system  of  ideas  about  the  thing,  a 
knowledge  which  should  actually  exhaust  the  thing  itself,  is  no 
longer  asking  for  knowledge  at  all,  but  for  something  entirely 
unintelligible.     One  cannot  even  say  that  he  is  desiring  not  to 

^Logik,  \i\2. 
i /did.,  ^304. 
^Ibid.,  II  305.306;  322. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  49 

know  but  to  be  the  things  themselves  ;  for  in  fact  he  would  not 
even  so  reach  his  goal.  Could  he  arrive  in  some  way  or  other  at 
being  that  very  metal  itself,  the  knowledge  of  which  in  the  way 
of  ideas  does  not  content  him  ;  well,  he  would  be  metal  it  is  true, 
but  he  would  be  further  off  than  ever  from  apprehending  himself 
as  the  metal  which  he  had  become.  Or  supposing  that  a  higher 
power  gave  him  back  his  intelligence  while  he  still  remained 
metal,  even  then  in  his  new  character  of  intelligent  metal  he 
would  still  only  apprehend  himself  in  such  wise  as  he  would  be 
represented  to  himself  in  his  own  ideas,  not  as  he  would  be  apart 
from  such  representation."  ^ 

There  is  another  aspect  of  this  question  which  brings  out  clearly 
what  Lotze's  real  position  is.  Appearance  or  knowledge  is  not 
reality,  nor  is  it  a  copy  of  reality.  The  old  theory  of  representa- 
tive perception  w^hich  starts  with  a  knowledge  of  subjective  ideas 
as  the  primary  datum,  was  compelled  to  say  that  ideas  were  like 
things,  or  copies  of  things.  This  theory  looks  upon  mind  and  know- 
ing from  an  external  point  of  view;  and  shice  the  observer  is  outside 
of  a  being  who  perceives  some  object,  he  is  conscious  of  both  ob- 
ject and  subject,  and  to  him  both  are  objects.  Furthermore,  he 
knows  that  these  two  objects  act  upon  one  another,  and  that  one 
produces  a  state  in  the  other  (the  conscious  object).  Conse- 
quently, to  this  observer  the  mechanism  of  knowing  consists  in  an 
object,  a  conscious  being,  and  a  state  of  consciousness  within  the 
latter.  Naturally  now  he  says  the  state  of  consciousness  repre- 
sents the  object,  is  a  copy  of  it  perhaps,  and  from  a  knowledge 
of  the  state  a  knowledge  of  the  object  is  derived.  As  I  under- 
stand Lotze,  this  copy -theory,  or  this  form  of  representative  per- 
ception, is  quite  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  his  philosophy. 
Nevertheless,  passages  from  his  works  can  be  cited  which  seem 
to  show  that  he  has  not  always  avoided — at  least  in  form  of  state- 
ment— the  difficulties  of  the  datum-theory  of  knowledge. 

That  ideas  are  like  things,  or  are  copies  of  them,  Lotze  denies. 

From  the  very  nature  of  knowing,  which  implies  an  activity  of  the 

subject,  ideas  cannot  be  like  things,  nor  be  a  copy  of  them."     The 

^Logik,  §308. 

"^  Ibid.,  Introd.,  \  VIII,  \  327  ;    Gr.  d.  Met.,  \  77  ;   Gr.  d.  Psy.,  §  12  ;    Miir.,  I, 
pp.  563  f.,  II,  6U-617. 


50  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

attempt  to  treat  ideas  as  copies  of  things  is  the  root  of  skepticism, 
and  the  same  can  be  held  of  any  form  of  representative  percep- 
tion which  regards  knowing  as  a  passage  from  knowledge  of 
ideas  to  knowledge  of  objects.^  This  is  evident  so  soon  as  the 
question  is  considered.  For  if  it  be  asked  whether  knowledge  is 
like,  or  whether  it  looks  like  reality,  or  is  a  correct  picture  of 
things,  or,  in  fact,  is  a  picture  in  any  sense,  then  there  is  only  one 
answer  to  these  questions,  and  that  is  we  do  not  know.  Conse- 
quently, if  knowledge  of  reality  depends  upon  our  ability  to  give 
an  answer  to  this  inquiry,  there  does  not  appear  to  be  any  way  in 
which  skepticism  can  be  avoided.  Lotze  was  aware  of  this.  He 
says  :  "  The  doubting  question,  therefore,  whether  things  may 
not  be  in  fact  quite  different  from  what  they  necessarily  appear  to 
us,  has  prima  facie  an  intelligible  sense  only  upon  the  assumption 
that  human  knowledge  is  intended  to  be  a  copy  of  a  world  of 
things."  - 

There  is  no  meaning  in  the  question  whether  or  not  appear- 
ance is  like  reality.  It  is  a  question  which  cannot  be  an- 
swered, because  it  is  a  question  which  should  not  be  asked. 
There  is  no  way  in  which  the  appearance  of  a  thing  can  be  com- 
pared with  the  thing  as  it  does  not  appear.  Our  knowledge  of  a 
thing  cannot  be  compared  with  the  same  thing  when  it  is  not 
known.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  knowing  distorts  the  thing, 
and  that  for  this  reason  things  cannot  be  known.  The  answer  to 
this  objection  is  two-fold.  In  the  first  place,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  knowledge  is  not  a  sort  of  reality,  which  can  make  or 
unmake  things,  and  so  affect  the  object  itself.  And,  secondly,  if 
it  is  admitted  that  knowing  does  not  really  distort  the  object,  can 
it  be  maintained  that  knowing  distorts  our  knowledge  ?  Neither 
of  these  alternatives  can  be  supported,  and  as  they  both  depend 
for  their  appearance  of  validity  upon  the  dogma  that  knowledge 
must  be  like  reality,  a  correct  comprehension  of  this  problem  is 
necessary  for  a  theory  of  knowledge.  But  it  may  be  said  :  Can- 
not things  appear  in  some  other  way  ?  This  may  be  possible ; 
and  in  fact  things  do  not  appear  in  precisely  the  same  manner  to 
every  one.  But  could  things  appear  in  totally  new  forms  ?  We 
1  Logik,  1 304.  2  Ibid.,  §  304. 


THE  APPEARANCE    OF  REALITY.  5 1 

simply  do  not  know,  but  this  question  itself  is  an  intelligible  one, 
and  may  conceivably  have  an  answer.  Can  things  be  known 
xvitJiout  appearing?  This  question,  we  take  it,  has  no  meaning 
and  no  answer.  It  is  true  that  we  can  ask  the  question,  and  on 
receiving  no  answer,  we  can,  if  we  will,  accept  mere  skepticism. 
But  this  kind  of  skepticism,  which  rests  on  no  accepted  facts,  is 
what  Lotze  calls  a  "  groundless  skepticism.'"  We  can  suppose 
if  we  will  that  appearance  is  only  an  idle  show,  but  it  is  a  ground- 
less supposition,  and  a  "curious  solicitude."^ 

V.  Before  we  take  up  the  second  point  of  Lotze's  criticism  of 
the  Hegelian  philosophy,  it  will  be  well  to  notice  a  criticism  which 
has  been  made  on  Lotze's  doctrine  of  knowing  reality  in  appear- 
ance. Mr.  Eastwood  says :  "  He  [Lotze]  constantly  adopts 
that  '  common-sense  '  usage  of  '  idea  '  by  which  the  term  is  taken 
to  mean  a  representation,  true  or  false,  of  an  object ;  a  '  mere 
idea '  being  a  representation  to  which  no  object  corresponds,  or  a 
representation  considered  apart  from  its  object.  We  hear  of  ob- 
jects '  corresponding  '  or  '  not  corresponding  '  with  conceptions, 
of  things  being  'more  than'  thoughts,  of  the  'possible,'  i.  c,  the 
world  of  conceptions,  being  '  wider  than  '  the  real ;  of  '  thing  '  with 
no  '  counterpart '  in  thought,  and  thoughts  with  no  '  counterpart ' 
in  things."^  Now  the  author  sees  that  there  is  a  popular  plaus- 
ibility in  this  theory  which  says  that  ideas  represent  things,  or  that 
things  appear  to  the  subject  in  ideas,  and  he  finds  that  this  seduc- 
tive speciousness  rests  upon  the  false  disjunction  "either  knowl- 
edge is  things  in  themselves,  or  knowledge  only  represents  things 
in  themselves."^  Lotze,  he  says,  takes  these  two  alternatives 
as  exhaustive  ;  therefore  "  naturally  every  one,  be  he  inclined  to 
Idealism  or  Realism,  will  decide  to  adopt  the  second  proposition, 
always  provided  that  zve  are  compelled  to  choose  either  the  one 
or  the  other."  But,  he  proceeds,  we  are  not  compelled  to  choose 
either  terms  of  this  disjunction.  The  true  alternative  is  :  "  thought 
must  be  the   unity   for  which  the  manifold  of  things   exists."* 

^Logik,  ?.  303. 
^Ibid.,  §303. 

3  "  Lotze's  Antithesis  bet-ween  Thought  and  Things,'''   Mind,  1892,  p.  309. 
^ Ibid.,  p.  310. 
5  Ibid.,  p.  475. 


52  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

With  this  analysis,  which  the  author  says  exhausts  all  possible 
cases,  Mr.  Eastwood  continues  :  "that  knowledge  could  never  (5^ 
things  in  themselves  is  perfectly  true,  because  tilings  hi  themselves 
are,  if  they  exist  at  all,  a  manifold  of  particulars  ;  [italics  mine] 
whereas  knowledge  implies  a  niiiversalization  of  particulars  [italics 
mine],  and  a  unity  of  a  manifold,  which  as  such  can  never  be  a 
manifold.  But  just  for  the  same  reason  it  is  true  that  knowledge 
can  never  represent  things -in-themselves.  A  unity  of  a  manifold 
is  a  whole,  one  and  inseparable ;  but  a  whole  can  no  more  repre- 
sent any  of  its  parts  than  it  can  be  any  of  them. "^  Since,  there- 
fore, the  first  two  alternatives  are  rejected,  there  is  nothing  to  do 
but  to  adopt  the  remaining.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  however,  Mr. 
Eastwood  has  given  no  proof  that  he  has  exhausted  all  possible 
cases,  and  that  the  third  is  the  only  true  expression  of  the  rela- 
tion of  thought  and  reality. 

Let  us  now  briefly  examine  this  criticism  of  Lotze.  In  the 
first  place,  it  seems  clear  that  Mr.  Eastwood  means  by  an  idea 
something  quite  different  from  what  Lotze  means  by  it.  As  we 
have  tried  to  show,  an  idea  for  Lotze  is  already  and  in  itself  a 
bit  of  information  about  reality.  Our  system  of  ideas  is  our 
knowledge  about  reality.  Mr.  Eastwood  does  not  adopt  this 
view.  "Of  course,"  he  says,  "if  'idea'  simply  =' that  which 
we  know '  every  one  will  concede  Lotze' s  postulate,  but  a 
moment's  consideration  will  show  that,  on  this  interpretation,  the 
postulate  is  quite  barren  and  tautologous.  We  are  thus 
naturally  led  to  ask  :  Does  not  Lotze  import  some  additional 
meaning  into  the  term  '  idea  '  ?  I  think  every  one  who  reads 
him  must  perceive  that  he  does."  ^ 

Just  what  Mr.  Eastwood  understands  by  the  expression : 
*  idea  =  that  which  we  know,'  is  not  easy  to  make  out ;  for  this 
expression  may  have  two  meanings  :  either  (i)  that  our  ideas 
are  our  knowledge  of  reality,  or  (2)  our  ideas  are  the  tilings 
which  we  know.  Both  of  these  views  seem  to  be  held  in  turn 
by  Mr.  Eastwood.  The  criticism  quoted  from  p.  309  seems  to 
have  point  only  on  condition  that  the  second  interpretation  is 
taken.  Again  he  remarks  :  "  Although  I  cannot  find  in  the 
1  Op.  cit.,  p.  475.  2  ibid.^  pp.  308,  309. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  53 

Ontolog}'  any  explanation  why  a  '  thing '  should  be  more  than 
or  other  than  a  thought,  I  think  I  can  find  the  reason  why  no 
such  explanation  is  there  forthcoming."^  This  passage  seems 
to  impl)-  the  same  doctrine.  But  the  Hrst  interpretation  also 
seems  to  be  maintained ;  for  he  uses  synonymously  idea, 
knowledge,  and  thought. " 

Leaving  this  point,  however,  let  us  return  to  Mr.  Eastwood's 
criticism  of  Lotze's  disjunction.  As  was  seen  above,  he  says,  if 
there  are  only  the  two  alternatives  :  (i)  "  knowledge  w  things- 
in-themselves ;  (2)  knowledge  only  represents  things-in-them- 
selves,"  we  must  accept  the  latter,  for  knowledge  can  never  be 
things  in  themselves.  His  reason  for  rejecting  this  alternative  is 
that  things  in  themselves  are  a  mere  manifold  of  particulars. 
This  argument  would  not  be  a  criticism  of  Lotze  even  though 
Lotze  had  maintained  that  knowledge  is  things-in-themselves ; 
for  Lotze  does  not  mean  by  things-in-themselves  '  a  mere  mani- 
fold of  particulars.'^  We  mention  this  fact  because  if  Mr.  East- 
wood understands  Lotze  to  mean  by  things-in-themselves  or  re- 
ality '  a  mere  manifold  of  particulars,'  then  we  agree  with  the 
critic  in  saying  thought  cannot  represent  such  a  reality  as  this. 
This,  however,  does  not  decide  the  point  against  Lotze.  Again, 
let  us  notice  what  Mr,  Eastwood  means  by  knowledge.  For  him 
knowledge  is  an  "  universalization  of  particulars ^  This  phrase 
either  indicates  a  dualism  of  synthesis  and  data,  or  knowledge  is 
not  raised  above  particulars.  Since  now  things  are  a  mere  man- 
ifold, and  since  knowledge  is  the  unity  of  a  manifold,  the  imity 
which  is  knowledge  cannot  represent  the  manifold  which,  is  reality. 
For  Lotze,  however,  knowledge  is  not  mere  unity,  and  reality  is 
not  mere  manifold,  consequently  the  above  criticism  of  Lotze  is 
simply  due  to  a  misapprehension  on  the  part  of  the  critic. 

Having  in  this  w^ay  laid  aside  the  two  first  alternatives,  Mr.  East- 
wood brings  forward  the  third  possibility,  which  he  considers  the 


'  Op.  cit.,  p.   321. 

*Cf.,  pp.  308,  310,  475.  Mr.  Eastwood's  notion  of  things  is  so  peculiar,  and  so 
different  from  Lotze's  that  his  criticism  really  misses  its  point  completely,  as  will  be 
seen  below. 

3  Met.,  \\  68-9«. 


54  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

only  remaining,  viz:  "thought  must  be  the  unity  for  which  the  man- 
ifold of  things  exists."  The  first  states,  according  to  the  writer, 
that  form  is  the  manifold  or  matter ;  the  second,  that  form  repre- 
sents (is  like)  the  manifold  ;  the  last  that  form  is  for  the  manifold. 
The  definition  then  of  knowledge  will  be :  knowledge  is  ih&fot'm 
for  which  the  manifold  of  mere  particulars  exist.  If,  now,  form 
can  exist  alone,  and  if  the  manifold  can  exist  alone,  then  there  is 
a  dualism.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  can  exist  only  in  union, 
there  can  be  no  things-in-themselves,  no  reality,  nor  can  there  be 
any  thought.  There  can  be  only  the  union  of  these  two,  but 
what  this  union  is  we  are  not  told.  It  is  not  things,  for  they  are 
the  manifold  ;  it  is  not  knowledge,  for  that  is  the  form.  If,  how- 
ever, it  is  objected  that  form  and  matter  cannot  be  separated,  and 
that  their  union  is  the  real,  what  can  we  say  about  knowledge  ? 
Is  it  the  form  of  the  real  ?  But  according  to  definition,  "  thought 
must  be  the  unity  for  which  the  manifold  of  things  exists";  con- 
sequently, it  is  the  manifold  and  not  reality  that  is  known.  This 
criticism  shows  that  the  writer  misunderstands  Lotze  in  several 
points.  These  misrepresentations  refer  to:  (i)  what  the  term 
'  represent '  means  ;  (2)  the  nature  of  the  object  or  reality ;  (3)  the 
nature  of  knowledge.  The  whole  criticism  goes  to  show,  more- 
over, that  some  such  position  as  that  of  Lotze  must  be  taken  up. 
It  may  be  stated  thus  :  The  human  mind  knows  reality — how 
this  is  possible  we  do  not  know  ;  our  knowledge  is  not  reality, 
but  is  aboict  or  of  reality.  To  say  that  we  know  reality,  and 
that  reality  appears  to  us  is  one  and  the  same  thing.^ 

VI.  We  come  now  to  Lotze's  second  criticism  of  idealism. 
The  first  dealt  with  Kant  chiefly ;  and  in  it  Lotze's  contention  is 
that  appearance  is  not  like  reality-,  but  is  knowledge  about  reality. 
Lotze's  second  proposition  is,  that  the  concepts  employed  in  human 
knowledge  are  not  the  metaphysical  principles  of  reality.  On  the 
contrary,  he  claims  that  these  principles  are  methodological,  and 
do  not  express  the  complete  truth  of  reality.  They  are  simply 
man's  way  of  comprehending  the  universe.  The  discussion  in 
this  connection  is  directed  against  the  idealistic  school  of  whom 
Hegel  is  regarded  as  a  representative. 

1  Mikr.,  I,  p.  192. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  55 

Lotze's  criticism  of  absolute  idealism  may  be  divided  into  two 
main  contentions:  (i)  knowledge  is  not  reality,  (2)  human  con- 
cepts are  methodological. 

Knowledge  is  not  reality.  Ideas  are  not  real  things.  It 
may  appear  to  some  that  this  is  so  obvious  that  any  discussion 
of  it  is  unnecessary  ;  but  it  is  not  so  plain  as  may  at  first  appear. 
Realism,  which  holds  that  Ideas  are  real,  is  still  maintained, 
and  wc  talk  of  the  reality  of  the  concepts.  A  thing,  according  to 
this  modified  form  of  Platonic  Realism,  is  no  longer  a  reality  in 
itself,  but  a  system  of  categories  or  a  judgment.  Thus  it  ap- 
pears that  absolute  Idealism  is  a  form  of  Mediaeval  Realism.  Of 
this  Idealism  Lotze  remarks  :  "  Idealism  is  right  when  it  defends 
the  conviction  that  the  real  in  itself  cannot  construct  the  ground 
of  the  world.  It  is  true  that  it  is  only  the  Ideal  which  is 
real.  But  the  war  against  the  absurd  thought  of  a  primitive 
reality  has  proceeded  so  far  that  all  concrete  content  has  disap- 
peared out  of  the  ideal  ground  of  the  world,  and  there  remains 
no  longer  the  Ideal  {Jdcalcs)  but  the  Idee  as  the  creative  ground 
of  the  world,  whose  task  is  to  develop  the  formal  nature  of  the 
Idee,  just  as  in  a  poor  realism  it  consists  in  being  the  consequence 
of  the  formal  concepts  of  the  real."  ^  Knowledge  is  put  in  the 
place  of  reality,  the  abstract  is  put  in  the  place  of  the  concrete. 
The  logical  concept  is  made  real.  The  deity  is  no  longer  a  per- 
son but  the  Idee. 

The  habit  of  thought  which  leads  to  this  reification  of  concepts 
and  judgments  is  common.  "  Whenever  men  have  believed 
themselves  to  have  discovered  a  principle  which  appears  to  repre- 
sent the  universal  element  in  the  constitution  and  development  of 
the  real  world,  they  invariably  go  on  to  exalt  it  into  the  position 
of  an  independent  reality,  and  to  represent  it  as  a  pure  form  of 
being,  in  comparison  with  which  the  individual  things  retire  into 
a  position  of  subordinate  and  even  unreal  existence.  I  need  not 
even  refer  to  the  latest  phase  of  German  philosophy  which  aspired 
to  set  on  the  throne  of  the  Platonic  Ideas  the  one  absolute  Idea ; 
for  the  same  tendency  is  apparent  enough  in  spheres  of  thought 
outside  the  circle  of  philosophy.      How  often  do  we  hear  in  our 

'^Med.  Psy.,  p.  157. 


56  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

own  day  of  eternal  and  unchangeable  laws  of  nature  to  which  all 
phenomena  and  their  changes  are  subjected  ;  laws  which  would, 
indeed,  cease  to  manifest  themselves  if  there  were  no  longer  any 
things  for  them  to  control,  but  which  would  even  then  themselves 
continue  in  their  eternal  validity  and  would  revive  with  their  old 
effective  power  the  moment  a  new  object  presented  itself  from  any 
quarter  for  them  to  apply  to  ;  nay,  there  is  not  even  wanting  on 
occasion,  the  enthronement  of  these  laws  above  all  existing  real- 
ities in  that  very  super-celestial  habitation  which  with  Plato  is  the 
home  of  the  Ideas."^ 

This  reification  of  concepts  is  based  on  a  confusion  in  respect 
to  the  meaning  of  the  term  '  reality.'  As  the  term  '  real  '  is  ordi- 
narily used,  it  covers  a  wide  range  of  meaning,  and  groups  under 
one  rubric  objects  of  thought  which  should  be  kept  distinct. 
"  We  call  a  thing  Real  which  is,  in  contradistinction  to  another 
which  is  not ;  an  event  Real  which  occurs  or  has  occurred,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  one  which  does  not  occur  ;  a  relation  Real  which 
obtains,  as  opposed  to  one  which  does  not  obtain  ;  lastly,  we  call 
a  proposition  Really  true  which  holds  or  is  valid,  as  opposed  to 
one  of  which  the  validity  is  still  doubtful.  This  use  of  language 
is  intelligible  ;  it  shows  that  when  we  call  anything  Real,  we  mean 
always  to  affirm  it,  though  in  different  senses  according  to  the 
different  forms  which  it  assumes,  but  one  or  other  of  which  it  must 
necessarily  assume,  and  of  which  no  one  is  reducible  to  or  con- 
tained in  the  other.  For  we  never  can  get  an  Event  out  of  simple 
Being,  the  reality  which  belongs  to  Things,  namely  Being  or 
Existence,  never  belongs  to  Events — they  do  not  exist  but 
occur ;  again  a  Proposition  neither  exists  like  things  nor  occurs 
like  events  ;  that  its  meaning  even  obtains  like  a  relation,  can 
only  be  said  if  the  things  exist  of  which  it  predicates  a  relation  ; 
in  itself,  apart  from  all  applications  which  may  be  made  of  it,  the 
reality  of  a  proposition  means  that  it  holds  or  is  valid  and  that  its 
opposite  does  not  hold."^ 

So  far  as  the  human  mind  can  distinguish,  in  the  sphere  of  ob- 
jects of  thought  which  are  called  real,  there  -are  these  three  cat- 
egories— being,  occurrence,  and  validity.  Now  Lotze's  conten- 
1  Logik,  1 320.  2  jiid^  ^  g  316. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  S7 

tion  is  that  \vc  cannot  go  behind  these  concepts,  and  reduce  them 
all  to  some  one  more  general  concept  which  will  include  all 
three  and  express  by  the  laws  of  its  nature  the  relation  of  being, 
occurrence  and  reality  to  one  another/  If  this  rule  is  not  fol- 
lowed in  the  formation  of  a  concept,  we  get  an  abstract  concept.^ 
Each  concept  is  s?n  generis  for  us  at  present.  So  far  as  I  can 
understand  Lotzc,  he  maintains  no  more  than  that  for  us,  with 
our  present  knowledge,  these  concepts  are  ultimate.  Never- 
theless, for  Lotze  these  concepts  are  only  human  ways  of  com- 
prehending reality.  They  are  therefore  methodological  and  not 
metaphysical. 

Since  these  concepts  are/c^/-  jnan  ultimate,  since  he  cannot  un- 
derstand how  they  are  related,  and  does  not  know  the  law  of 
their  dependence,  all  he  can  do  is  to  use  them  as  if  they  were  ul- 
timate. They  divide  the  province  of  knowledge  into  three  well- 
defined  fields,  and  the  investigator  will  therefore  best  avoid  error 
if  he  maintains  the  definite  distinctions  which  mark  them  off,  and 
does  not  mix  up  the  three  categories  as  if  they  were  interchange- 
able, since,  in  some  way  unknown  to  him,  he  believes  they  be- 
long together  in  one  system  of  knowledge.  If  we  had  a  system 
of  knowledge,  then  we  might  be  able  to  know  how  these  cate- 
gories are  related,  but  since  our  knowledge  is  only  fragmentary, 
and  is  not  a  system,  their  interdependence  is  not  known,  and  we 
ought  not  to  treat  them  as  if  it  were  known.  The  failure  to 
observe  the  distinction  is,  according  to  Lotze,  the  source  of  the 
error  which  he  is  combating.  "  Now  misunderstandings  must 
always  arise,  when  under  the  persuasion  that  the  object  which 
we  are  considering  must  have  some  sort  of  reality  or  affirmation 
proper  to  it,  we  endeavour  to  attribute  to  it,  not  that  kind  of 
reality  which  is  appropriate  to  it,  but  a  different  kind  which 
is  alien  to  it."  '^ 

This  investigation  has  provided  an  explanation  of  the  doctrine 
that  knowledge  is  reality.  This  doctrine  is  due  to  the  ambiguity 
of  the  term  'reality.'      Reality,   i.  e.,  the  world,   the   universe, 

1  Cf.  Logik,  I  ZZ- 

2Cf.  md.,  U  20-33. 

^Ibid.,  ?3i6. 


58  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

is  real  in  the  sense  that  it  exists.  It  is  a  being  with  hfe,  and  is 
spiritual  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter.  Whereas,  on  the 
other  hand,  knowledge  is  real  in  the  sense  that  it  is  vahd.  It  has 
validity  but  not  existence.  Now  validity  and  existence  are  concepts 
which  zue  cannot  equate  with  one  another,  and  each  for  human 
cognition  is  ultimate.  "As  little  as  we  can  say  how  it  happens 
that  anything  is  or  occurs,  so  little  can  we  explain  how  it  comes 
about  that  a  truth  has  Validity ;  the  latter  conception  has  to  be 
regarded  as  much  as  the  former  as  ultimate  and  underivable,  a 
conception  of  which  everyone  may  know  what  he  means  by  it, 
but  which  cannot  be  constructed  out  of  any  constituent  elements 
which  do  not  already  contain  it."  ^  Consequently,  since  validity 
and  existence  are  methodologically  ultimate  concepts,  the  one 
cannot  be  substituted  for,  or  predicated  of,  the  other.  For  this 
reason  the  proposition  '  knowledge  is  reality,'  is  guilty  of  con- 
fusing these  two  notions,  and  is  therefore  an  impossible  judgment 
for  the  human  understanding. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  Lotze  maintains  that  thought 
and  reality  have  no  relation  to  one  another  ;  for  him  they  belong 
to  the  same  world  ;  but  what  he  does  hold  is,  that  we  do  not 
know  hozv  the  one  expresses  the  other,  how  thought  is  valid  of 
existence.  Furthermore,  he  declares  that  "  the  relation  does  not 
consist  in  this,  that  a  fixed  number  of  concepts  as  existing  are  to 
us  things,  and  as  tliought  are  the  ideas  of  things ;  on  the  contrary, 
our  concepts  may  be  increased  indefinitely  without  any  addition 
to  the  sum  of  existence.  And,  further,  setting  out  from  innum- 
erable arbitrarily  chosen  standpoints,  we  may  build  up  the  same 
whole  by  constructions  of  particular  ideas,  varying  according  to 
the  variety  of  these  standpoints ;  and  thus  there  may  be  many 
definitions  which  define  the  same  object  with  equal  accuracy  and 
exhaustiveness.  None  of  these  definitions  is  the  nature  of  the 
object,  though  each  is  valid  as  to  it,  because  there  is  no  object  of 
which  the  nature  can  be  conceived  by  means  of  an  Idea  that  is 
isolated,  and  unconnected  with  all  others,  and  characterized  only 
by  eternal  self-identity."  ^  It  may  be  supposed,  however,  that  this 
failure  of  knowledge  to  be  reality  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  have 

^Logic,  I  316.  ^Mikr.,  II,  p.  327. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  $9 

considered  only  ideas,  and  not  judgments  and  syllogisms.  Ihxt 
Lotze  maintains  that  neither  judgments  nor  syllogisms  are  reality/ 
But  what  can  be  said  is  that  judgments  and  syllogisms  more 
adequately  rcprcsoit  or  express  reality  ///  kitozv/cdi^e.'^ 

The  second  part  of  Lotze's  criticism  of  absolute  idealism  is 
that  human  concepts  are  methodological,  and  cannot  be  taken, 
just  as  they  are  and  without  modification,  as  the  complete  prin- 
ciples by  means  of  which  reality  can  be  exhaustively  known. 
Absolute  idealism,  holding — and  quite  justly — the  belief  that 
reality  is  an  ideal  system  in  which  all  parts  unite  to  form  the 
whole,  and  have  their  value  in  relation  to  this  whole,  sets  out  to 
interpret  this  system  of  reality  in  a  system  of  knoivledge.  Its 
purpose  is  to  comprehend  all  things  in  their  eternal  relations,  and 
see  them  just  as  they  really  are,  i.  e.,  as  they  would  appear  to  a 
being  who  had  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  whole  system.  How 
Lotze  replies  to  this  theory,  we  will  now  endeavor  to  explain. 

In  chapter  I  it  was  shown  that  Lotze  uses  concepts  methodo- 
logically, and  does  not  take  them  to  be  exhaustive  analyses  of  the 
objects  of  knowledge.  Thus  it  may  occur  that  concepts  seem 
ultimate.  If  they  seem  so,  Lotze  affirms,  accept  them  as  such, 
always,  however,  with  the  reservation  that  they  are  methodo- 
logical, and  necessarily  are  not  ontological  principles  or  final 
concepts.  Complete  or  final  they  cannot  be,  for  they  are  merely 
parts  of  human  cognition.  Nevertheless,  accept  them  in  practical 
scientific  work  of  discovery  as  ultimate,  for  only  in  this  way  can 
we  attain  to  definite  notions.  This  advice  is  simply  a  caveat 
against  hasty  generalization,  and  does  not  mean  that  we  are  to 
accept  as  ultimate  any  conceptions,  and  renounce  all  further  effort 
to  understand  their  relation  to  one  another.  Lotze  would  be  the 
last  to  deny  the  interdependence  of  our  concepts.  But  he  says 
we  do  not  know  in  any  a  priori  way  what  this  dependence  is,  and 
since  we  are  ignorant  of  their  relation,  we  must  frame  our  con- 
cepts more  or  less  independently  of  each  other,  and  base  the  law 
of  their  structure  upon  the  mass  of  material  which  we  have  at 
hand,  and  for  which  we  are  seeking  an  explanation.      If  then  we 

^Logik,  U  343-345- 

iMikr.,  I,  p.  669;  II,  pp.  328,    ff.  338;    LogiVe,  U  56-74- 


6o  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

bear  in  mind  these  two  facts  of  method  :  (i)  concepts  are  methodo- 
logical ;  (2)  opposition  to  hasty  generalization — it  seems  to  me 
that  we  can  understand  Lotze's  divisions  of  knowledge. 

There  are  four  ways,  says  Lotze,  in  which  there  can  be  a  syn- 
thesis of  the  manifold  in  knowledge:^  (i)  "the  synthesis  of 
apprehension"  brings  "the  manifold  together  into  a  simultane- 
ous possession  of  consciousness,  without  combining  any  two  of 
its  elements  in  a  different  order  from  any  other  two."  What 
Lotze  aims  to  describe  is  what  has  been  called  receptivity  or  ap- 
prehension of  the  manifold.  That  he  is  not  committed  to  the 
datum-theory  is  evident  if  we  recall  the  fact  that  his  concepts 
are  methodological,  and  that  he  would  consider  it  a  hasty  gen- 
eralization to  subordinate  this  '  synthesis  of  apprehension  '  to  a 
higher  synthesis.  This  synthesis  of  apprehension  is  the  work  of 
the  mind,^  and,  moreover,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  Lotze  re- 
gards the  mind  as  unitary,  and  supposes  it  to  act  as  a  whole.  The 
alternative  to  this  view  is  that  Lotze  held  to  the  faculty-psychol- 
ogy.^ (2)  "The  synthesis  of  perception."  This  stage  denotes 
that  the  unifying  of  the  manifold  has  proceeded  further  than  in 
the  first  stage.  The  impressions  of  sense  are  sorted  and  united 
into  the  perception  of  definite  objects  in  a  definite  world  of 
things.  This  process  of  unification  has  been  carried  on  below 
the  level  of  conscious  direction  by  means  of  thought.  Lotze's 
words  are:  "This  connection  also  is  supplied  by  the  inward 
mechanism  of  consciousness  without  any  action  of  thought,  and 
however  firmly  defined  and  finely  articulated  it  may  be,  it  exhibits 
nothing  but  the  fact  of  an  external  order,  and  reveals  no  ground 
of  coherence  justifying  coexistence  in  that  order."  '"  (3)  "Syn- 
thesis of  thought"  has  for  its  object  "to  separate  the  merely 
coincident  amongst  the  various  ideas  which  are  given  to  us,  and 
to  combine  the  coherent  afresh  by  the  accessory  notion  of  a 
ground  for  their  coherence."  '"     This  synthesis  works  upon  the 

1  Logik,  \  20. 
^Mikr.,  I,  pp.  226  f. 
^  Ibid.,  I,  pp.  168-192. 

*  Logik,  §  20.   Cf.  ibid.,  {,\  121-123.    If  we  remember  Lotze's  use  of  concepts  there 
is  no  need  of  difficulty  here.    These  four  stages  are  only  a  logical  classification. 
5  Logik,  §  20. 


THE  APPEARANCE    OF  REALITY.  6 1 

actual  plane  of  life,  and  among  the  actual  facts,  and  endeavors  to 
understand,  and  determine  how  they  are  related  to  one  another. 
As  the  first  two  syntheses  dealt  with  what  we  may  call  facts — 
sensations  and  perceptions — so  this  "logical  form  of  synthesis" 
departs  from  the  merely  given,  and  seeks  to  explain  the  facts 
given  by  the  two  first  forms  of  mental  construction.  This  log- 
ical form  of  synthesis  deals  with  concepts,  judgments,  and  syl- 
logisms, /.  c\,  with  the  interpretation  of  the  given  facts.  It  deals 
with  the  movements  of  the  mind  among  its  facts,  and  its  aim  is 
to  discover  the  laws  and  principles  of  this  synthesis,  to  understand 
how  one  part  depends  upon  another,  and  if  possible  to  express 
this  relation  in  the  form  of  a  law,  concept,  judgment  or  syllogism. 
The  mind  begins  with  the  facts,  and  passes  from  the  knowledge 
of  the  one  to  that  of  the  other,  in  order  to  observe  the  connec- 
tion that  is  between  them.  This  is  the  sphere  of  the  search  for 
truth,  and  the  only  method  which  is  available  is  the  realistic. 
The  human  mind  is  in  this  position  and  is  compelled  "to  collect 
its  knowledge  piecemeal  by  experiences  which  relate  immediately 
to  only  a  small  fragment  of  the  whole,  and  thence  to  advance 
cautiously  to  the  apprehension  of  what  lies  beyond  its  horizon."  ^ 
In  this  search  for  truth  all  concepts  are  methodological,  and 
must  not  be  taken  for  more  than  rough  approximations  to  the 
complete  truth.  (4)  "  The  complete  synthesis  of  thought  "  is  the 
last  and  highest  degree  of  synthesis.  Simply  stated,  it  is  the  last 
form  of  synthesis  carried  out  to  completion.  This  is  not  an 
actual  synthesis  for  human  cognition,  it  is  the  goal  of  all  syn- 
thesis, and,  so  far  as  man  is  concerned,  it  is  an  ideal  toward 
which  he  can  work,  but  which  he  can  never  attain.  This  syn- 
thesis, if  reached,  would  be  the  system  of  knowledge  which 
some  idealists  have  supposed  was  within  the  grasp  of  the  human 
understanding.  "  In  such  a  synthesis  we  would  have  before  our 
mind,  not  the  mere  fact  of  manifold  elements  in  order,  but  also 
the  value  which  each  element  possessed  in  determining  the 
coalescence  of  the  whole.  If  what  we  thus  apprehended  were 
an  object  in  real  existence,  we  should  see  which  were  the  prior, 
determining,  and  effective  elements  in  it,  in  what  order  of  depen- 

'  Logik,  Introd.,  \  IX. 


62  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

dence  and  development  the  others  followed  from  them,  or  what 
end  was  to  be  regarded  as  their  authoritative  center,  involving  in 
itself  the  simultaneous  union  or  successive  growth  of  them  all. 
...  It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  synthesis  of  this  sort  would  be 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  knowledge  of  the  thing ;  as  the 
goal  of  all  intellectual  effort,  it  lies  as  far  above  the  province  of 
logic  as  the  first  and  second  modes  of  connection  lay  beneath 
it."  ^  This  synthesis  is  nothing  less  than  perfect  knowledge 
which  would  behold  all  things  in  their  eternal  relations,  and  com- 
prehend them  as  members  of  one  complete  system.  In  such  a 
knowledge  all  things  would  be  seen  in  unity,  and  philosophy 
would  be  all  of  one  piece. 

Of  these  four  degrees  of  synthesis,  the  latter  falls  beyond  the 
reach  of  man,  yet  it  is  just  this  fourth  and  unattainable  knowledge 
which  absolute  idealism  pretends  to  have.  At  any  rate  such  is 
Lotze's  interpretation  of  absolute  idealism.^  Inreply  to  this  as- 
sumption Lotze  observes:  "Only  a  mind  which  stood  at  the  center 
of  the  real  world,  not  outside  individual  things  but  penetrating 
them  with  its  presence,  could  command  such  a  view  of  reality  as 
left  nothing  to  look  for,  and  was  therefore  the  perfect  image  of  it 
in  its  own  being  and  activity."  ^  But  the  human  mind  is  not  at 
the  center,  and  does  not  behold  reality  sitb  specie  aeternitatis.  It 
gathers  its  knowledge  piecemeal,  and  for  this  purpose  uses  tenta- 
tive concepts,  and  many  circuitous  devices  to  unify  its  knowledge. 
In  fact  much  of  our  concept-system  is  little  more  than  the  scaf- 
folding of  knowledge  ;  and  our  categories  are  all  methodological.* 

The  concepts  and  forms  of  thought,  or  the  intellectual  syn- 
theses which  are  used  in  human  cognition,  simply  express  imper- 
fect and  incomplete  ways  of  viewing  reality.  "  They  are  con- 
densed expressions  for  a  definite  union  of  separable  elements,  which 
act  and  react  upon  each  other  according  to  constant  and  universal 
laws,  and  give  rise  in  one  combination  to  one  set  of  results,  in 
another  to  another."  ^     We  can  idealize  our  concepts  till  they  are 

1  Logik,  \  20. 

^Gesch.  d.  Phil,  \  34. 

^  Logik,  Introd.,  \  IX. 

4Cf.  Ibid.,  I  IX  ;   Gesch.  d.  Phil.,  \  34. 

5  Logik,  I  144. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  63 

complete,  but  they  would  be  only  ideal,  and  not  the  concepts 
which  we  use.  "  The  name  '  concept '  does  not  seem  to  deserve 
in  logic  that  exalted  significance  which  the  school  of  Hegel  has 
given  it,  and  in  which  it  claims  to  express  the  knowledge  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  object.  .  .  .  There  may  be  a  privileged 
concept  [italics  mine] ,  which  follows  the  thing  itself  in  its  being 
and  development,  or  takes  up  a  point  of  view  at  the  very  center 
of  the  thing,  the  fountain-head  of  its  self-determination  and  self- 
organization  ;  but  it  is  not  the  function  of  logic  to  reserve  its 
concept-Z'^i/v;/  for  so  very  select  a  filling.  By  the  logical  concept 
we  understand  such  a  form  of  apprehending  any  matter  of 
thought,  from  whatever  point  of  view,  that  consequences  admit 
of  being  drawn  from  it  which  coincide  again  at  certain  points  with 
results  flowing  from  that  matter,  that  is,  from  the  thing  itself; 
and  as  the  thing  projects  itself  differently  at  every  different  point  of 
view,  there  may  be  various  equally  right,  and  equally  fruitful 
concepts  of  the  same  object."  ^  This  passage  shows  definitely 
the  methodological  nature  of  the  concept.  It  may  be  expressed 
in  this  way.  (i)  Each  concept  expresses  only  an  aspect  of  a 
thing,  since  there  can  be  several  equally  right  and  equally  fruit- 
ful concepts  of  it.  (2)  Since  the  concept  manifests  only  a  part  of 
the  nature  of  the  thing,  it  beholds  it  only  from  the  periphery,  and 
not  from  the  center.  It  does  not  reveal  the  object  as  it  is.  (3) 
All  such  concepts,  therefore,  are  liable  to  change  and  modifica- 
tion, and  can  gradually  develop  and  express  more  and  more  of 
the  nature  of  the  thing. 

Not  only  did  absolute  idealism  undertake  too  much  when  it 
accepted  the  categories  as  the  constitutive  principles,  or  the  in- 
tellectual representations  of  these  forms  and  their  content,  but  it 
undertook  an  impossible  task  when  it  made  the  attempt  to  dis- 
cover all  these  principles  by  the  dialectic  method.  What  Lotze 
says  of  classification  of  concepts  will  apply  here,  for  his  remarks 
are  quite  general.  "  Lastly,  it  will  be  asked,  how  classification 
by  development  reaches  its  required  conclusion,  the  certainty, 
namely,  that  it  has  really  found  that  supreme  law  or  logical 
destination  which  governs  the  particular  object  or  the  universe  at 

1  Logik,  \  27. 


64  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

large.  To  this  we  can  only  answer,  that  by  way  of  mere  logic 
it  is  quite  impossible  to  arrive  at  such  a  certainty.  The  form  of 
classification,  like  all  logical  forms,  is  itself  an  ideal,  an  ideal 
which  is  demanded  by  thought,  but  which  can  only  be  realized, 
so  far  as  it  can  be  realized  at  all,  by  the  growth  of  knowledge 
[italics  mine].  Nor  indeed  is  this  an  exceptional  condition,  such 
as  would  lay  this  first  of  our  systematic  forms  under  a  disadvan- 
tage."^ Lotze  goes  on  in  this  paragraph  to  say  that  this  defect 
which  was  found  in  the  concept  applies  also  to  the  judgment  and 
the  syllogism.  In  no  case  does  either  of  these  forms  exhaust  the 
nature  of  the  thing,  and  provide  the  knowing  mind  with  a  con- 
cept which  fully  expresses  reality.  Were  there  such  a  concept, 
then  it  would  contain  implicit  in  itself  all  knowledge,  and  such  a 
concept  would  become  explicit  by  the  dialectic  method,  and  out 
of  it  would  unfold  the  complete  system  of  concepts  about  real- 
ity. Since,  however,  each  concept  is  framed  from  only  a  limited 
knowledge  of  reality,  and  expresses  only  the  nature  of  reality  ob- 
served within  narrow  limits,  it  contains  a  very  small  portion  of 
knowledge.  Now  such  a  concept  can  be  unfolded,  but  no  de- 
velopment will  get  out  of  it  more  than  is  contained  in  it.  Fur- 
thermore, this  concept  was  formed  from  definite  problems  and 
definite  knowledge,  and  in  some  definite  field  of  enquiry.  To 
this  field  it  belongs  exclusively  ;  and  even  here  it  is  only  par- 
tially true.  Consequently,  were  this  concept  developed,  and  ap- 
plied generally,  we  would  be  using  hasty  generalization,  a  pro- 
cedure which  Lotze  especially  condemns.  The  obvious  conclusion, 
therefore,  is  that  our  concepts,  judgments,  and  syllogisms  are 
methodological  devices  which  the  human  understanding  employs 
in  knowing  reality.  They  are  only  imperfect  attempts  to  repre- 
sent the  nature  of  things  ;  they  obtain  and  express,  as  it  were, 
only  an  aspect  of  reality,  and  in  no  case  do  they  manifest  that 
aspect  completely.  A  complete  concept,  i.  c,  a  concept  which 
contains  implicitly  in  itself  the  whole  system  of  concepts,  judg- 
ments, and  knowledge  of  reality,  implies  every  other  complete 
concept.  For  any  intelligence,  therefore,  to  be  in  possession 
of  this  "  privileged  concept,"  as  Lotze  calls  it,^  would  require 
^  Logik,  ^  12,^.  ^Ibid.,\2T. 


THE  APPEARANCE   OF  REALITY.  65 

nothing  less  than  omniscience.  Such  a  concept  would  reveal  the 
complete  nature  of  reality,  so  that  there  would  be  nothing  further 
to  know.  It  would  reveal  things  just  as  they  are.  This  con- 
cept, if  indeed  it  exists,  would  be  constitutive,  for  it  would  reveal 
perfectly  the  essence  of  things.  On  the  other  hand,  the  concepts 
which  are  present  to  human  thought  fall  far  short  of  this  perfec- 
tion. They  grasp  only  a  meager  portion  of  reality,  and  reveal  only 
a  particle  of  its  nature.  For  this  reason  they  are  not  constitu- 
tive. They  are  not  the  very  principles  in  reality  ;  they  do  not 
even  express  these  principles  to  any  degree  of  accuracy,  but  are 
being  continually  changed,  and  re-adapted  with  the  growth  of 
knowledge.  All  our  knowledge,  therefore,  is  subjective,  and  is 
an  account  of  reality  as  it  appears  to  human  beings.^  Therefore 
the  metaphysician  "  has  to  guard  against  the  mistake  of  regarding 
abstractions,  by  means  of  which  he  fuses  single  determinations  of 
the  real  for  his  use,  as  constitutive  and  independent  elements, 
which  he  can  employ,  by  help  of  his  own  resources,  to  build  up 
the  real."' 

VII.  In  conclusion,  let  us  briefly  summarize  the  chief  points 
in  this  chapter.  Lotze's  problem  was  to  mediate  between  two  an- 
tithetic doctrines.  The  first  is  that  reality  is  unknowable,  and  only 
appearance  is  known.  Kant,  who  held  this  view,  maintained  that  we 
know  only  phenomena,  for  since  all  the  categories  of  knov^ledge  be- 
long to  the  realm  of  appearance,  there  is  no  possible  way  in  which 
reality  can  be  known,  or  brought  under  the  categories.  The 
second  doctrine  admitted  the  Kantian  position  that  we  know  only 
phenomena,  but  called  the  phenomena  reality,  and  denied  that 
there  is  any  reality  behind  phenomena.  Appearance  is  reality  for 
this  school  of  thinkers.  Now  Lotze  objects  to  both  of  these  ex- 
treme views.  He  does  not  deny  the  knowledge  of  reality  like  the 
first,  nor  maintain  that  appearance  is  reality  like  the  second. 
His  position  is  that  reality  is  know7i  in  appearance. 

Absolute  idealism  is  the  logical  development  of  the  Kantian 
doctrine  that  we  know  only  appearance,  i.  e.,  the  mental  con- 
struction of  reality.  Since  only  appearance  is  known,  then  the 
thing  which  is  behind  appearance  is  unknowable ;  and  the  later 

iCf.  Am>-.,  II,  333  ff.  2  Me/.,  ^83. 


66  LOTZKS   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

idealism  was  fully  justified  (starting  as  it  did  with  the  Kantian 
dogma  that  only  appearance  is  known),  in  denying  the  existence 
of  the  thing-in-itself.  But  we  must  remember  that  this  denial  of 
the  thing  in  itself  is  the  rejection  of  reality  in  so  far  as  it  is  not 
appearance.  But  this  dogma  demands  a  re-interpretation.  If  it 
is  true,  then  absolute  idealism  is  sound.  The  conclusions  of  this 
idealism,  however,  led  Lotze  to  examine  the  presuppositions  of 
this  school  of  thought.  Now  the  underlying  principles  of  the 
critical  philosophy  and  its  developments  is  the  assumption  that 
only  appearance  is  known.  This  assumption  Lotze  attacked,  and 
concludes  that  in  truth  we  do  not  know  appearance  at  all.  Reality 
is  known,  and  known  in  appearance. 

This  criticism  of  absolute  idealism  explains  an  important  prob- 
lem. If  appearance  is  reality,  then  our  concepts  are  real  also  ; 
and  it  is  possible  for  any  one  who  subjects  his  ideas  to  examina- 
tion to  develop  out  of  them  a  complete  concept-system.  Lotze 
denies  this.  Appearance,  he  asserts,  is  not  reality.  It  is  only  a 
partial  manifestion  of  reality.  Our  concepts  and  our  knowledge 
are  therefore  only  partial.  They  are  methodological  and  not 
constitutive. 


CHAPTER    III. 


REALITY    AND  KNOWLEDGE. 


In  the  preceding  chapter  it  has  been  shown  that  Lotze  regards 
reahty  as  known.  Ideas  and  thoughts  arc  our  knowledge  of 
reahty,  and  when  we  have  tlioughts  or  ideas  we  possess  thoughts 
and  ideas  about  reahty.  They  arc  not  thoughts  about  nothing, 
nor  are  they  thoughts  about  themselves,  but  they  are  about 
reality.  Furthermore,  Lotze  has  demonstrated  that  thoughts  are 
not  real  things,  but  they  are  about  real  things,  and  exist  in  a 
conscious  being  as  "habits  of  action"  or  cognitive  activities. 

So  far  this  discussion  has  brought  us.  But  were  it  to  be  left 
here,  Lotze's  position  would  be  given  only  imperfectly.  It  is  our 
purpose,  therefore,  to  continue  our  exposition  of  Lotze's  theoiy 
of  knowledge  in  order  to  discover  more  definitely  what  his  positive 
doctrine  is.  To  this  end  it  is  important  to  understand  his  concep- 
tion of  reality,  and  the  relation  in  which  the  knowing  subject  stands 
to  it.  This  is  important  because  the  theory  he  advocates  is  a  de- 
parture from  a  good  deal  of  the  idealism  of  the  day.  This  departure 
from  accepted  lines  can  be  stated  in  this  way  :  Kant  and  some 
Post-Kantians  finding  that  things,  as  more  than  phenomena,  are 
unknowable,  held  that  the  phenomenal  world  only  is  known. 
Consequently,  the  categories  belong  to  appearance  and  cannot  be 
applied  to  the  world  of  real  things.  It  is  true  that  this  school 
affirms  that  categories  constitute  the  nature  of  objects,  but  ob- 
jects are  only  phenomenal.  Or  to  speak  psychologically,  objects 
are  ideas,  and  groups  of  ideas,  associated  ideas,  or  even  a  union 
of  peripherally  and  centrally  aroused  sensations.  The  object  is 
plainly  the  mental  construct,  express  it  as  we  may.  Therefore, 
we  may  claim  that  the  characteristic  distinction  between  critical 
and  absolute  idealism  is  that  the  former  retains  the  notion  of  a 
reality  behind  phenomena,  whereas  the  latter  does  not.  But,  as 
we  have  seen,  Lotze  mediates  between  these  two  positions.  He 
denies    that    knowledge    is    confined    to  phenomena.     In  truth 


68  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

knowledge  is  not  of  phenomena,  but  of  reality ;  and  phenomena 
are  an  appearance  or  knowledge  of  real  things.  This  change  of 
standpoint  implies  a  great  change  of  logical  theory,  (i)  It  pro- 
vides for  a  metaphysic  in  a  way  that  the  Kantian  theory  did  not. 
According  to  the  conception  of  Kant  and  Post-Kantians,  the  only 
reality  is  the  mental  construction,  consequently  the  only  metaphy- 
sic is  logic.  For  Lotze,  on  the  other  hand,  thought  is  not  reality 
and  metaphysic  is  not  logic.  (2)  Since  knowledge  is  of  reality, 
the  categories  apply  to  reality,  and  connect  or  separate  real  things. 
For  example,  not  merely  phenomena,  but  real  things  are  caus- 
ally related.  VlS)  Things  are  not  selfless.  They  are  a  unity  of 
states  and  possess  in  some  degree  the  nature  of  selfhood.  All 
things  that  exist  have  selfhood.  Selves,  however,  though 
Fursiclisein  are  not  Herbartian  reals.  They  form  a  unity  in 
interaction,  and  are  causally  related.  (4)  It  is  this  inter- 
related world  of  selves,  then,  which  is  knovv'n — known  inade- 
quately of  course,  but  known.  (5)  A  change  in  one  self  is 
known  in  another  self  because  the  former  interacts  upon  the 
latter,  and  produces  an  idea  in  it.  This  idea  is  the  awareness  by 
theoneself  of  the  other — how,  we  do  not  know.  Because  reality 
consists  of  selves,  then,  it  can  be  known  by  a  self. 

Before  we  take  up  Lotze' s  discussion  of  the  nature  of  reality, 
and  its  relation  to  knowledge,  however,  it  is  advisable  to  refer  to 
an  objection  which  will  arise.  The  charge  may  be  made  that 
Lotze  is  now  attempting  a  task  which  he  maintained  was  impos- 
sible. He  has  over  and  over  again  insisted  that  human  knowl- 
edge is  methodological,  and  is  not  a  system  of  knowledge. 
Now,  however,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  he  regards  these  same 
concepts  as  constitutive,  and  proceeds  to  give  a  metaphysic  of 
reality. 

Let  us  endeavor  first  of  all  to  ascertain  Lotze's  own  position, 
All  human  knowledge,  he  maintains,  is  subjective.  It  is  the  hu- 
man way  of  comprehending  reality.^  This  indeed  is  true,  not 
only  of  ordinary  knowledge,  but  of  metaphysic  as  well.  We  may 
go  further  and  maintain  that  if  our  most  concrete  knowledge  is 
subjective,  metaphysic  is  still  more  subjective.      But  the  question 

"^Met.,  \  94. 


REALITY  AND    KNOWLEDGE.  69 

arises  :  How  can  there  be  a  methodological  metaphysic  ?  Is  not 
this  a  contradiction  in  terms  ?  It  is  certainly  a  contradiction  in 
terms  if  metaphysic  is  a  system  of  knowledge  in  the  sense 
which  absolute  idealism  meant  by  a  'system.'  But  this  is  not 
what  Lotze  understands  by  metaphysic.  "  I  readily  admit  that 
I  take  philosophy  to  be  throughout  merely  an  inner  movement 
of  the  human  spirit.  ...  It  is  an  effort,  within  the  presupposed 
limits,  even  to  ourselves  absolutely  unknown,  which  our  earthly 
existence  imposes  upon  us,  to  gain  a  consistent  view  of  the  world. 
.  .  .  An  absolute  truth,  such  as  the  archangels  in  heaven  would 
have  to  accept,  is  not  its  object,  nor  does  the  failure  to  realize 
such  an  object  make  our  efforts  bootless."^  "  For  we  do  not 
possess  either  of  Nature  or  of  History  such  complete  knowledge, 
as  would  enable  us  to  guess  the  whole  of  the  divine  plan  of  the 
universe  ;  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  determine  this 
from  meagre  earthly  experience  betray  only  too  plainly  the  un- 
favorable nature  of  our  standpoint,  which,  with  all  the  one-sided- 
ness  of  its  limited  outlook,  wishes  to  be  taken  for  that  topmost 
summit,  from  which  the  whole  world  may  plainly  be  seen  spread 
out  below. "^  Metaphysic,  therefore,  is  not  a  complete  system  of 
knowledge  of  such  a  nature  that  all  knowledge  and  all  reality  can 
be  deduced  from  one  single  principle  such  as  Fichte  demanded.^ 
This  no  doubt  may  be  the  complete  metaphysic,  but  it  is  not  that 
which   Lotze  attempts  to  outline.      Metaphysic,  therefore,  like  all  / 

our  knowledge,  is  methodological.  We  may  define  metaphysic  y/ 
from  Lotze's  point  of  view  as  an  outline  of  reality  as  a  whole.  It 
is  an  attempt  to  subject  our  concepts  and  knowledge  to  a  com- 
prehensive criticism,  and  to  get  a  glimpse  of  what  they  all 
mean.  Such  a  definition  would  be  for  the  most  part  formal. 
We  may  admit  then  with  Merz  that  the  drift  of  philosophy  is 
"to  tiy  to  bring  unity  and  harmony  into  the  scattered  thoughts 
of  our  general  culture,  to  trace  them  to  their  primary  assump- 
tion, and  follow  them  into  their  ultimate  consequences,  to  con- 
nect them  altogether,  to  remodel,  curtail,  or  amplify  them,  so  as 

1  Met. ,  ?  94. 

^Mikr.,  II,  pp.  723-4. 

3  Ueber  den  Begriff  der  IVissenscha/tslehre,  ^2. 


70  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

to  remove  their  apparent  contradictions,  and  combine  them  in  the 
unity  of  an  harmonious  view  of  things,  and  especially  to  make  those 
conceptions  from  which  the  single  sciences  start  as  assumptions 
the  object  of  research,  and  to  seek  for  the  limits  of  their  applica- 
bility."^ But  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  this  ideal  means  a  system 
of  knowledge.^  A  system  of  knowledge  is  not  man's  posses- 
sion. "  Our  cosmic  theory  has  not  the  unity  necessary  for  knowl- 
edge, and  our  hopes  lack  that  confirmation  which  would  make  them 
strong  and  vigorous.  ,  .  .  We  must  to  a  large  extent  content 
ourselves  with  making  clear  what  it  is  that  we  mean  and  that  we 
require,  without  being  able  to  show  how  that  which  we  require 
and  mean  can  be ;  we  shall  not  be  able  to  prove  throughout  the 
necessity  of  that  which  we  are  seeking,  and  to  develop  its  whole 
content  with  the  certainty  of  a  strict  logical  deduction  from  un- 
deniable premises,  but  must  be  content  to  remove  the  difficulties 
that  hinder  a  living  faith  in  its  existence,  and  to  exhibit  it  as  the 
goal  to  which  we  have  to  approximate,  although  we  may  not 
reach  it."^ 

Now  it  may  be  asserted  this  does  not  confirm  the  consistency 
of  a  'methodological  metaphysic'  Furthermore,  it  may  be  con- 
tended that  such  a  use  of  terms  is  simply  a  dogmatic  statement. 
Consequently,  it  may  be  admitted  that  Lotze  understands  meta- 
physic in  this  way,  and  yet  it  may  be  maintained  that  such  a  con- 
. junction  of  concepts  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  In  reply  to  this 
criticism  we  may  grant  that  if  complete  knowledge  is  necessary 
before  an  outline  comprehension  of  reality  is  possible,  then  a  meta- 
physic in  subjective  concepts  is  impossible.  But  it  is  not  at  all 
evident  that  metaphysic  implies  any  such  complete  knowledge. 
On  the  other  hand  the  very  opposite  seems  to  be  true.  A  very 
imperfect  knowledge  may  be  metaphysical,  just  as  a  very  limited 
knowledge  may  be  scientific.      It  is  not  the  quantity  of  knowledge 

^Ency.  Brit.,  Article,  "  Lotze." 

*  By  a  system  of  knowledge  we  mean  complete  knowledge,  such  as  an  Absolute  Ideal- 
ism claims  to  have.  In  such  a  system  of  knowledge  each  concept  contains  implicitly 
all  knowledge.  When  such  a  "privileged  concept ''  develops  it  will  unfold  a  system 
of  the  universe.  But  such  a  development  is  impossible  for  our  methodological  con- 
cepts. 

^  Mikr.,  II,  p.  576. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  ?! 

that  makes  a  scientist  or  a  metaphysician,  but  rather  the  problem 
he  is  deaUng  with.  Moreover,  the  experience  of  everyone  who 
considers  his  relation  to  the  universe,  goes  to  prove  that  some 
sort  of  a  metaphysic  is  possible.  We  do  have  some  notion  of 
the  totality  of  existence,  and  think  of  it  in  this  way.  No  mind 
is  ever  confined  to  the  bare  particular.  In  some  degree  or  other 
every  enlightened  human  mind  has  a  conception  of  reality  as  a 
whole,  and  in  a  general  way  knows  its  significance  and  mean- 
ing. That  we  have  a  philosophy  at  all  is  sufficient  proof  of  this 
fact.  We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  human  beings  have  meta- 
physical insight.  Are  they  therefore  possessed  of  constitutive 
concepts  ?  This  I  presume  is  a  question  that  philosophers  will 
divide  upon.  But  this  '  division'  seems  the  proof  that  human 
concepts  and  human  knowledge  are  not  constitutive,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  are  methodological.  For  were  they  constitutive,  did 
they  express  the  complete  essence  of  reality,  it  is  difficult  to  un- 
derstand how  there  could  be  so  much  difference  of  opinion 
among  scholars.  With  this  brief  statement  then  it  seems  evident 
that  we  must  accept  the  doctrine  that  we  are  in  possession  of  a 
metaphysical  theory  of  reality,  and  that  this  theory  is  methodolog- 
ical. It  gives  the  outline  merely.  And  these  outlines  form  no 
set  doctrine,  but  change  as  our  knowledge  of  their  concrete  con- 
tent changes.  At  any  rate  this  is  Lotze's  position,  and  it  is  with 
his  doctrine  that  we  are  concerned. 

Having  now  learned  that  Lotze  regards  metaphysic  as  an  out- 
line survey  of  reality  as  a  whole,  it  will  be  our  purpose  in  this 
chapter  to  develop  his  conception  of  reality,  and  his  notion  of 
the  relation  in  which  each  cognitive  subject  stands  to  it.  There 
will  therefore  be  two  parts  :  (i)  the  nature  of  reality,  and  (2)  the 
theory  of  knowledge. 

I.'  Though  human  knowledge  is  fragmentary,  and  not  a  system, 
it  poi)its  toivards  a  system.  All  knowledge  is  a  process  of  unifying 
our  experience.  "  Every  myth  that  gives  a  new  and  poetic  form 
to  some  phenomena,  bears  witness  to  the  activity  of  human  cog- 
nition, that  can  seldom  be  satisfied  with  direct  perception."^ 
Knowledge  is  always  striving  for  the  ideal,  for  it  is  in  unity  that 
^  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  306,  307. 


72  LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

we  behold  the  significance  of  things.  "  Youth  strives  to  get  from 
particulars  to  the  whole,  and  not  to  the  universal  ;  it  seeks  more 
earnestly  for  the  one  meaning  of  every  phenomenon  than  for  the 
numerous  conditions  of  its  realization  ;  and  it  would  always  much 
sooner  discover  the  unity  of  the  thought  which  binds  together  the 
disconnected  fragments  of  the  cosmic  course  as  living  members 
of  a  beautiful  and  harmonious  whole,  than  inquire  after  the  un- 
attractive conditions  upon  the  universal  validity  of  which  depends 
the  possibility  of  all  beauty  and  of  all  connection  of  parts  into  a 
whole."^  This  unifying  activity  of  the  mind  which  is  the  essence 
of  knowledge  "has  been  at  work  at  all  times,  and  whenever  a 
view  of  the  world  more  or  less  like  the  theory  of  mechanical  ex- 
planation has  developed  itself,  this  impulse  has  met  it  with  the 
reiterated  demand  that  the  world  and  all  things  in  it  should  be 
regarded  as  a //W;/^  development."^  Everywhere  in  knowledge 
the  aim  of  the  mind  is  to  bring  together,  and  relate  in  conscious- 
ness our  knowledge  of  reality,  to  bind  together  our  separate 
experiences  or  cognitions  of  reality  into  a  complete  unity  of 
knowledge.  This  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  some  kind  of 
knowledge  can  exist  prior  to  unity.  All  knowledge  implies  a 
degree  of  unity,  and  all  progress  in  knowledge  is  a  development 
of  this  unity.  Everywhere,  then,  the  knowing  mind  strives  for  a 
wider  and  more  comprehensive  knowledge. of  reality.  But  at 
best  it  can  attain  only  a  very  imperfect  unity  of  knowledge.  Just 
as  it  is  striving  for  unity,  it  is  conscious  of  unity  in  outline  and 
comprehends  reality  as  a  whole.  But  such  a  final  unity  is  only 
an  ideal  which  we  can  think  in  general  terms,  or  know  in  outline, 
but  cannot  know  in  detail.  It  can  never  be  known  so  con- 
cretely that  the  whole  of  knowledge  can  be  deduced  from  it.^ 
Nevertheless  this  "idealism  of  youth  "  has  often  made  extrava- 
gant claims  for  human  cognition,  and  has  thought  itself  "  able  to 
bring  all  reality  into  subjection  to  its  fairest  dreams."  This  tem- 
per, however,  "  is  broken  in  upon  by  the  realism  of  riper  age 
which  gives  calm  recognition  even  to  what  is  unimportant  when 

'^Mikr.,  II,  p.  309. 
^Logik,  ^150. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  73 

it  occurs  as  a  fact,  as  one  of  the  unalterable  fashions  of  the  world's 
course."'  While  it  is  true  that  the  extravaf^ant  hopes  of  idealism, 
as  a  s}'stem  of  knowledge,  have  been  restricted  by  sober  realism, 
the  fact  remains  that  all  the  forms  of  knowing  point  towards  a 
unity.  Unity  is  the  goal,  it  is  what  we  aim  at.  It  is  the  ideal, 
and  when  it  is  attained  in  knowledge  we  shall  possess  a  system  of 
knowledge.  Since  all  knowing  points  towards  it,  it  is  a  conscious 
end  which  we  can  outline  in  conception,  but  only  in  general  terms. 
Though  we  do  not  know  it  as  we  know  a  particular  bit  of  con- 
crete experience,  still  as  an  ideal  it  appeals  to  us,  and  we  accept 
it  as  the  goal.  Though  we  do  not  know  how  it  will  be  realized, 
or  what  will  be  its  concrete  filling  and  its  final  form,  yet, 
since  all  knowledge  points  towards  it,  we  can  believe  in  that 
whose  solution  we  do  not  now  understand.^  "  Nor  is  the  validity 
of  these  ideals  at  all  impaired  by  the  fact  that  human  knowledge 
is  not  able  to  apply  them  to  every  given  instance."'^ 

Our  enquiry  now  has  shown  that,  in  so  far  as  we  know  reality, 
we  know  it  as  related ;  and  the  fuller  our  knowledge  is  the  more 
is  the  unity  manifest.  Now  the  objection  may  be  raised  that  it  is 
only  knowledge  which  tends  towards  a  unity.  It  may  be  ad- 
mitted that  kiioiviiig  is  a  unifying  process,  and  that  our  mental 
construction  has  the  nature  of  a  unity,  while  the  unity  of  reality 
may  be  denied.  It  may  be  urged  that  we  have  no  right  to  go  from 
the  unity,  or  partial  unity,  of  knowledge  to  the  unity  of  reality. 
This  argument,  indeed,  is  unanswerable  if  we  start  out  first  with 
a  knowledge  of  appearance,  and  secondly  attempt  to  obtain  a 
knowledge  of  reality.  On  this  theory  not  only  is  the  judgment 
about  the  unity  of  reality  unjustifiable,  but  we  are  not  warranted 
in  passing  any  judgment  whatever  about  reality.  Reality  is  simply 
unknowable,  and  this  objection  proves  more  than  was  intended. 
But  as  has  been  shown  above,  this  is  not  Lotze's  conception  of 
knowledge.  Knowledge  is  never  of  phenomena  only,  it  is  first 
and  essentially  knowledge  of  reality.  Consequently,  this  charge 
against  Lotze's  position  has  no  weight.      If  now  we  know  reality 

1  Mikr.,  II,  p.  312. 

2Cf.  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  717.   f. 

^Logik,  I  151  ;  Cf.  U  120-151. 


/ 


74  LOTZES   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

as  a  unity,  there  is  nothing  illogical  in  saying  that  reahty  is  a  unity. 
If  knowledge  does  not  mean  this,  then  we  have  no  knowledge. 
Again,  we  must  insist  that  this  theory  does  not  make  our  knowl- 
edge constitutive,  i.  e.,  express  the  complete  nature  of  reality. 
We  may  know  reality  to  be  a  unity,  but  have  little  knowledge  of 
the  details  of  this  unity.  Our  knowledge  so  far  as  it  goes  teaches 
that  reality  is  a  unity.  Now  we  can  go  beyond  this  actual 
realized  knowledge,  and  on  the  basis  of  this  knowledge  construct 
an  ideal  of  reality  as  a  whole.  All  the  reality  we  know  is  unitary, 
i.  e.,  holds  together  in  one  system,  and  nothing  is  independent. 
An  ideal  therefore  constructed  on  positive  knowledge  and  based 
upon  the  longings  of  the  human  mind  ^  outruns  actual  knowledge, 
and  finds  rest  only  in  a  comprehensive  outline  which  to  some 
degree  observes  reality  as  a  whole. ^  This  ideal,  then,  even 
though  we  do  not  and  cannot  know  it  as  it  is,  we  can  believe 
in,  and  seek  to  know  it  more  and  more  completely,  and  compre- 
hend it  in  truer  outline.  That  we  may  not  know  reality,  and  that 
a  criticism  of  the  ability  to  know  reality  is  required  before  we 
have  any  right  to  construct  a  metaphysic  is  an  attitude  which  Lotze 
rejects.  If  we  know  at  all  we  know  reality.^  There  is  another 
important  reason  why  we  should  believe  in  the  unity  of  reality, 
even  though  we  do  not  know  it  to  be  a  unity,  or  cannot  prove  it 
to  be  a  unity.  Man  interprets  realit}^  in  terms  of  his  own  nature, 
i.  e.,  anthropomorphically.  Since  now  the  world  is  understood  in 
terms  of  man,  it  will  be  reasonable  to  expect  to  find  the  nature  of 
reality  most  intelligible  when  it  is  conceived  after  the  highest  in- 
terpretation of  the  self  Now  Kant  showed  that  knowledge  and 
experience  imply  the  ujiity  of  the  self.  Lotze  also  accepts  the 
same  doctrine.*  Unity  is  the  essential  nature  of  the  self  With- 
out the  unity  of  cojtsciousness  "  the  sum-total  of  our  internal 
states  could  not  even  become  the  object  of  our  self-observation."  ^ 

JCf.  Afikr.,  II,  pp.  305-311  ;   Logik,  |  151. 

2Cf.  Logik,  II  120-151. 

3Cf.  Met.,  Introd.,  I  IX. 

*  It  has  been  customary  to  regard  unity  as  abstract,  and  some  of  the  criticisms  of 
Lotze  derive  all  their  force  from  this  tacit  assumption.  For  this  reason  it  is  necessary  to 
refer  to  Lotze' s  conception  of  unity.  In  no  case  does  he  regard  unity  as  abstract  and 
devoid  of  differences.  On  the  contrary,  unity  for  him  is  a  unity  of  differences.  Cf. 
Mikr.,  I,  pp.  152  ff.  ;  Met,  U  68-98;  Logik,  \\  351-365- 

^ Mikr.,  I,  p.  152. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  75 

"  We  come  to  understand  the  connection  of  our  inner  life  only  by 
referring  all  its  events  to  the  one  ego,  lying  unchanged  alike  be- 
neath its  simultaneous  variety  and  its  temporal  succession.  Every 
retrospect  of  the  past  brings  with  it  this  knowledge  of  the  ego  as 
a  combining  centre  ;  our  ideas,  our  feelings,  our  efforts  are  compre- 
hensible to  us  only  as  its  states  or  energies,  not  as  events  floating 
unattached  in  the  void."  ^  Furthermore,  there  is  not  only  this 
critical  deduction  of  the  unity  of  the  self,  but  we  know,  as  clearly 
as  we  know  or  perceive  anything,  that  the  self  is  a  unity,  and  the 
subject  of  diverse  activities,  ideas,  and  interests.  Thus  in  the  self 
we  have  direct  experience  of  a  real  thing  which  is  the  subject  of 
changing  states,  is  in  interaction  with  other  selves,  and  behaves 
like  any  real  thing.  In  this  self  we  find  that  its  essence  is  its 
unity.  This  reality  at  any  rate  is  one.  Consequently,  when  we 
interpret  the  larger  reality,  we  must  interpret  it  in  terms  of  our 
own  self.  But  since  the  self  has  many  aspects,  and  since  we  can 
methodologically  separate  them,  and  consider  these  elements 
more  or  less  independently,  we  can  read  the  nature  of  the  uni- 
verse in  terms  of  each  of  these  aspects  of  the  self.  Nevertheless, 
in  whatever  way  we  view  it,  we  are  constrained  to  see  in  it  some 
kind  of  a  unity.  If,  however,  w^e  interpret  it  in  terms  of  the  self 
as  a  living  whole,  we  will  view  the  universe  as  a  unity  in  the  high- 
est sense  of  the  word  that  we  know.  As,  indeed,  we  do  not  know 
licnv  the  elements  of  the  self  form  a  unity,  so  we  do  not  know  ^ 
enough  about  the  unity  of  the  world  to  be  able  to  deduce  its  con- 
crete content  from  the  one  principle  of  unity.  Notwithstanding, 
we  do  know  the  self  to  be  a  unity  even  though  we  cannot  see  hozv 
this  unity  is  constructed.  Now  there  is  no  contradiction  in  hold- 
ing the  self  to  be  a  unity,  while  at  the  same  time  acknowledging 
that  the  concrete  filling  of  this  outline  is  beyond  human  insight. 
Nor  is  there  any  contradiction  in  believing  in  the  unity  of  the 
cosmos  when  knowledge  of  the  details  of  this  unity  is  not  forth- 
coming. Not  only  is  there  no  contradiction  in  this  notion  of  unity, 
but  oxiY  faith  in  this  unity  is  firmly  grounded  ;  for  such  a  faith  turns 

1  yl///(v-.,  I,  p.  154.  A  distinction  usually  obscured  must  be  maintained.  The  critical 
deduction  only  proves  that  knoivlcdge  implies  and  is  made  by  the  unity  of  the  self.  But 
it  is  often  stated  that  the  mind  makes  tiafiire.  Nature  and  knowledge  are  not  dis- 
tinguished clearly  enough  in  this  statement. 


^ 


76  LOTZKS  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

,  out  to  be  the  indispensable  presupposition  of  all  knowledge.  If  we 
%  did  not  believe  in  the  unity  of  the  world,  there  could  be  no  con- 
ceivable meaning  in  knowledge  ;  for  in  every  instance  in  which  we 
know  an  object  we  know  it  in  some  degree  as  a  unity.  If  the 
objects  to  which  the  knowing  mind  is  turned  do  not  belong  to 
a  unity,  but  were  incommensurable,  then  they  could  never  be 
known. ^  We  may  then  accept  Xht  faith  in  the  unity  of  reality.  V 
But  Lotze  is  often  termed  a  realist  as  opposed  to  an  idealist. 
It  is  maintained  that  his  philosophy  is  realism  and  not  idealism. 
If  idealism  is  taken  in  the  Post-Kantian  sense,  then  Lotze  is  not 
an  idealist ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  if  realism  is  taken  in  the 
Herbartian  sense  then  Lotze  is  not  a  realist.  Consequently,  the 
attribution  of  either  of  these  terms  to  his  philosophy  does  not 
signify  much  till  the  precise  meaning  of  the  terms  is  known.  If, 
however,  idealism  means  that  the  world  is  a  system,  in  which  all 
the  individual  existences  have  a  place  and  value  in  relation  to 
the  whole,  then  Lotze  is  an  idealist.  Furthermore,  if  realism  is  the 
conviction  that  reality  is  more  than  the  individual,  but  that  it  can 
be  known  only  through  individual  experience,  then  Lotze  is  a 
realist.  From  these  points  of  view  he  is  both  realist  and  idealist. 
Lotze  mediates  between  idealism  and  realism,  and  for  this  reason 
his  philosophy  has  been  called  'ideal-realism.'^  Achelis  as- 
serts that  Lotze' s  philosophy  is  "an  idealism  on  a  mechanical 
basis."  ^ 

The  question  may  be  asked  :  How  can  a  philosopher  be  an 
idealist  and  a  realist  at  the  same  time.  The  answer  is  that  Lotze  is 
a  metaphysical  idealist  and  a  logical  realist.  While  he  accepts  the 
unity  of  reality,  and  claims  that  all  things  belong  to  one  system,  he 
still  maintains  that  our  knowledge  is  no  such  complete  unity,  and 
that  we  must  adopt  the  empirical  method  in  order  to  know 
reality.  Reality  is  an  idealistic  whole,  and  knowledge  must  pro- 
ceed realistically.  In  other  words,  idealism  denotes  a  system  of 
reality,  \^\\\\&  realise n  is  a  method  of  enquiry.    A  great  deal  of  con - 

iCf.  Logik,  \\  13,  19,  346,  349. 

2  Cf.  Lindsay  :  Hermann  Lotze,  Mind,  Vol.  I,  pp.  363-382  ;  Vorbrodt :  Principien 
d.   Etkik,  p.  4. 

^ Lotze' s  Philosophie,   V.  f.  w.  Ph.,  1882,  p.  27. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  T7 

fusion  has  arisen  by  not  distinguishing  ideahsm  as  an  ontological 
system,  from  realism  which  is  a  method  of  inquir}\  Absolute  ideal- 
ism has  frequently  confused  these  two  views.  It  rightly  affirms  that 
reality  is  a  system,  but  extends  the  term  '  system  '  to  our  knowl- 
edge about  realit}'.  The  result  has  been  that  a  '  system  of  reality  ' 
and  a  '  system  of  knowledge  '  have  been  used  interchangeably,  and 
idealism  has  come  to  mean  a  system  of  knowledge.  But,  as  we 
have  seen,  there  is  no  justification  on  Lotzc's  theory  for  this 
identification  of  knowledge  and  reality.  Idealism  applies  primarily 
to  reality,  and  not  to  knowledge.  Lotze,  therefore,  maintains 
that  reality  is  a  system,  and  that  knowledge  must  advance  em- 
pirically.^ We  will  now  endeavor  to  substantiate  these  conclu- 
sions from  Lotze's  own  works. 

In  Lotze's  criticism  of  Fichte,  and  of  the  deductive  method  in 
philosophy,  he  affirms  :  "  this  prejudice,  which  has  become  ex- 
ceedingly harmful,  confuses  the  idea  which  we  must  hold  {Jicgcii) 
concerning  the  essence  of  things,  with  our  subjective  efforts  to 
know  the  thing.  We  believe  that  reality  is  a  unity  in  the  sense 
that  all  its  content,  however  different  it  may  be,  must  follow  from 
the  plan  of  the  whole  in  a  definite  place  as  a  necessary  link  of 
the  whole.  But  only  a  spirit  who  stood  at  the  center  of  the 
world  and  beheld  everything,  could  deduce  serially  from  this  one 
supreme  thought  the  details  of  reality.  But  man  who  is  in  the 
whirl  of  particular  things,  will,  on  the  other  hand,  make  use  of 
many  circuitous  ways  and  small  artifices  in  order  to  discover 
fragments  of  that  system  of  the  world,  and  to  piece  them  together 
as  well  as  possible."  ^  Again,  he  affirms  that  idealism  accepts 
the  unity  of  reality,  and  that  all  individuals  have  their  existence, 
value,  and  function,  in  their  relation  to  reality  as  a  whole.^  There 
is  no  doubt  in  Lotze's  mind  about  the  system  of  reality.  But  the 
situation  is  very  different  when  we  come  to  our  knowledge  of 
reality.  "  What  the  soul  does,  it  does  in  virtue  of  the  commis- 
sion which  it  has  received  from  the  highest  Idee.  It  will  continue 
to  exist,  not  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  substance,  but  in  so  far  as  self- 
preservation  is  its  appointed  function  or  task  {aiifgegebejie  Lcis- 
tung).     But  we  are  in  possession  of  neither  an  adequate  expres- 

1  Cf.  Lindsay  :  op.  cit.,  pp.  365  f.     «  Gcsch.  d.  Ph.,  \  34.     ^  Cf.  Med.  Psy.,  pp.  151-160. 


78  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

sion  of  the  highest  Idee,  nor  of  a  knowledge  of  the  definite 
vocation  {Beriifs)  which  it  places  upon  its  moments,  its  individual 
creations.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  determine  a  priori  what 
universal  laws  the  activity  of  the  soul  will  follow.  They  must 
be  regressively  derived  from  experience  to  which  realism  owes 
everything."^  Other  passages  could  be  quoted  which  prove 
that  Lotze  distinguishes  between  the  nature  of  reality  and  the 
nature  of  knowledge,  and  regards  the  former  as  a  system  in 
which  all  the  parts  have  their  worth  and  value  in  relation  to  the 
whole,  whereas  the  latter  is  fragmentary,  and  proceeds  inductively 
or  experientially." 

This  unity  of  the  world  can  therefore  be  conceived  in  two  ways 
— idealistically  or  realistically.  When  it  is  conceived  so  that  the 
unity  is  emphasized,  and  the  whole  is  made  the  important  factor 
which  gives  reality  and  worth  to  the  individuals  contained  in  it, 
it  is  conceived  idealistically.  When,  however,  the  parts  are 
taken  most  into  account,  and  the  problem  is  to  rise  from  the 
knowledge  of  the  parts  to  the  knowledge  of  the  whole,  the  world 
is  regarded  realistically.  Plainly,  the  latter  is  the  method  of 
research,  while  the  former  indicates  a  general  belief  in  regard 
to  reality.  Lotze  puts  this  matter  in  a  clear  way  :  "  there  are 
two  general  ways,  however,  of  understanding  the  matter,  alike 
admissible  consistently  with  our  assumptions  of  the  unity  of  the 
world,  which  remain  to  be  noticed  here.  I  will  indicate  them 
symbolically  by  means  of  our  previous  formulae,  M=^  f  [A,  B,  R'\ , 
and  the  converse,  (p  \_A,  B,  R]  =  M.  By  the  former  I  mean  to 
convey  that  M  is  to  be  considered  the  form-giving  Pri7is,  of 
which  the  activity,  whether  in  the  form  of  self-maintenance  or 
development,  at  every  moment  conditions  the  state  of  the  world's 
elements  and  the  form  of  their  combination,  both  being  variable 
between  the  limits  which  their  harmony  with  31  finds  for  them. 
In  the  second  formula,  M  is  presented  as  the  variable  resulting 
form,  which  the  world  at  each  moment  assumes  through  the  re- 
ciprocal effects  of  its  elements — this  form  again  being  confined 

1  Med.  Psy.,  p.  l6o. 

2Cf,  Gr.  d.  Met.,  ^28;    Gr.  d.  Aesth.,  §§7-10;    Cf.  also  Seth,  A.:    Phil.  Rev., 
Ill,  pp.  58-62  ;    Royce  :  Spirit  of  Mod,  Phil.,  pref.,  pp.  xiii  f. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  79 

within  limits  which  the  necessity,  persistently  and  equally  prev- 
alent in  these  effects,  imposes.  I  might  at  once  designate  these 
views  as  severally  idealism  and  realism,  were  it  not  that  the  fa- 
miliar, but  at  the  same  time  somewhat  indefinite  meaning  of  these 
terms,  makes  a  closer  investigation  necessary."^  Now  these  two 
ways  of  viewing  reality  are  necessary.  It  is  through  the  unity 
of  the  world  that  it  has  a  meaning,-  and  that  everything  in  it  has 
a  meaning,  and  it  is  because  we  believe  that  the  world  has  a 
meaning  that  we  attempt  to  discover  in  detail  what  this  meaning 
is.  But  a  belief  in  the  unity  of  reality  will  not  of  itself  disclose 
the  nature  of  reality.  Furthermore,  if  we  rely  on  deduction  from 
the  nature  of  the  highest  Idee  for  our  knowledge  of  the  concrete 
nature  of  reality,  we  shall  not  find  it,  for  such  a  method  is  a 
hysteron-proteroii ,  and  presupposes  what  it  sets  out  to  discover.^ 
Since  knowledge  cannot  begin  with  the  whole,  it  must  begin  with 
the  parts.  It  begins  with  the  facts  of  experience,  and  its  aim  is 
to  combine  them  according  to  law.  "  The  mode  of  their  com- 
binations may  become  known  to  us  through  the  elaboration  of 
experience  :  and  this  knowledge  gives  us  as  much  power  of  an- 
ticipating the  future  as  satisfies  the  requirements  of  active  life."* 
This  method  therefore  groups  facts,  classifies  them  and  combines 
them  according  to  law.  But  "  realism  does  not  enquire  how  the 
course  of  the  world  came  to  be  determined  as  it  is.  It  contents 
itself  with  treating  the  collective  structure  of  the  world  at  any 
moment  as  the  inevitable  product  of  the  forces  of  the  past  op- 
erating according  to  general  laws."^  If  realism  were  taken  in 
this  extreme  sense,  and  did  not  have  reference  to  an  ultimate 
unity,  "  an  understanding  of  the  universe  is  not  what  this  method 
will  help  us  to  attain.  .  .  .  But,  even  within  the  range  of  realistic 
views,  the  invincible  spiritual  assurance  asserts  itself  that  the 
world  not  merely  is,  but  has  a  meaning."  Although  realism 
must  be  supplemented  by  idealism,  and  is  itself  nothing  more  than 

^MeL,  ^89. 

3Cf.  Met.,  §93. 

*Met.,  §93;    Cf.  Klein:   Lotze' s  ontologische  Ansichten  in  ihrem  Verhdllniss  zur 
Lehre  Herbarts,  pp.  34-38. 

5  Met.,  \  93  ;  Cf.  also  Med.  Fsy.,  p.  152. 


i^ 


^ 


8o  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

the  method  of  ideahsm,  "  at  the  same  time  it  is  only  enquiries 
conducted  in  the  spirit  of  reahsm  that  will  satisfy  the  wishes  of 
idealism.  They  will  indeed  never  unveil  the  full  meaning  of  the 
Idea.  But  there  is  nothing  but  recognition  of  the  dc  facto  rela- 
tions of  things  that  can  make  our  thoughts  at  least  converge 
towards  the  center  of  the  universe."^ 

Having  now  seen  that  Lotze  conceives  of  reality  idealistically, 
let  us  follow  him  in  his  development  of  the  nature  of  reality,  and 
ascertain  more  in  detail  his  outline  view  of  the  nature  of  things. 
If  we  recall  the  fact  that  all  knowing  is  an  anthropomorphic  inter- 
pretation of  reality,  we  can  maintain  that  the  idealistic  conception 
of  reality  is  as  complete  an  anthropomorphic  interpretation  as  we 
can  possess.  This  interpretation  is  in  terms  of  the  complete 
man,  and  will  consequently  reveal  the  imperfection  of  all  theories 
based  upon  a  partial  anthropomorphism.  Materialism  is  found 
insufficient  because  it  interprets  reality  in  corporeal  terms  alone. 
All  forms  of  Eleaticism  endeavor  to  understand  the  world  in 
terms  of  thought,  mysticism  in  terms  of  feehng.  Lately  Scho- 
penhauer has  attempted  to  explain  the  world  as  will.  But  all  these 
systems  of  philosophy  have  taken  an  aspect  of  man  and  seek  to 
explain  the  order  and  nature  of  reality  in  terms  of  this  one  aspect. 
Lotze,  on  the  other  hand,  has  made  an  effort  to  understand  it  in 
terms  of  man  as  man." 

Now  how  must  this  unity  of  the  work  be  conceived  ?  We  have 
seen  that  it  is  a  true  unity,  a  unity  in  difference.  The  problem 
is  therefore  to  discover  the  nature  of  this  unity  ;  and  it  is  found 
that  one  form  of  unity  which  we  customarily  use  is  that  of  the 
Idee.  In  art,  unity  is  conceived  of  as  the  Idee.  It  is  the  Idee 
which  is  the  unifying  principle  in  knowledge.^  May  not  this  Idee 
then  be  the  unifying  principle  of  things,  and  also  of  reality  as 
a  whole  ?■*  If  now  the  Idee  is  the  formal  or  unifying  principle 
it  itself  is  not  reality.  "  It  would  therefore  be  incorrect  to 
call  the  Idea,  simply    as  the  Idea,  the  supreme  principle  of  the 

ij/^^.,  §93. 

2  It  is  through  our  many-sided  nature — thought,  feehng,  activity,  etc. — that  we  can 
know  what  reahty  is.     Mikr.,  II,  pp.  354,  355. 
^Logik,   §§313-321. 
*Met.,  I  90. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  8 1 

world.  Even  the  absolute  Idea,  although  in  opposition  to 
the  partial  Ideas  which  it  itself  conditions  as  constituents  of 
its  meaning,  it  might  fith-  be  called  unlimited,  would  not  on 
that  account  be  free  from  a  definitely  concrete  content,  with 
which  it  fills  the  general  form  of  the  Idea."^  Form  imphes  con- 
tent, and  in  no  sense  can  the  highest  reality  be  mere  form. 
To  consider  the  empty  Idee  as  the  highest  reality  would  be  to 
substitute  for  reality  an  abstraction,  to  separate  form  from  its  con- 
tent, and  to  place  over  against  reality  the  laws  and  principles 
which  express  its  activity  and  nature.  Such  a  reality  as  this 
could  "  only  be  reached  by  an  extinction  of  all  content  whatever." 
Such  an  attempt,  however,  to  understand  the  world  has  been 
made  by  all  forms  of  Eleaticism.  This  philosophy  proceeds  by 
pure  thought  alone,  and  will  accept  no  material  content.  But 
all  these  attempts  put  a  logical  concept  in  the  place  of  reality. 
"These  ways  of  thinking  are  only  justifiable  so  far  as  they  imply 
a  refusal  to  ascribe  to  the  supreme  M,  as  a  sort  of  presupposition 
of  its  being,  a  multitude  of  ready-made  predicates,  from  which 
as  from  a  given  store  it  was  to  collect  its  proper  nature.^  It  is 
no  such  doctrine  that  we  mean  to  convey  in  asserting  that  the 
supreme  principle  of  reality  is  to  be  found  in  a  definitely  concrete 
Idea,  M,  and  not  in  the  Idea  merely  as  an  Idea."^  Since  form 
and  content  cannot  be  separated,  the  Idee  as  such  cannot  be  real. 
Of  course,  a  logical  distinction  between  the  Idee  and  its  content 
can  be  made  ;  but  such  a  distinction  is  made  only  for  purposes 
of  discussion.  It  is  not  a  distinction  which  exists  in  the  nature 
of  things.  Reality  is  the  "  content  of  the  Idea,"  or  the  concrete 
Idee. 

If,  however,  this  conception  of  reality  as  concrete  Idee  is  so 
obvious,  why  has  any  other  conception  of  its  nature  been  taken  ? 
Why  has  the  Idee  been  called  the  real  ?     It  is  simply  a  case  of 

J  Alet. ,  §  90. 

2  The  refusal  to  assign  attributes  to  reality  in  as  far  as  it  means  a  refusal  to  make 
our  methodological  concepts  constitutive  principles  of  its  nature,  is  a  very  valid  and 
legitimate  refusal.  But  this  refusal  raises  concepts  to  constitutive  principles  when  it 
affirms  that  reality  is  form  only.  We  can  deny  that  we  know  what  the  definite  con- 
tent of  the  Idee  is,  and  at  the  same  time  maintain  that  all  content  belongs  to  the  Idee. 

3  Met.,  \  90. 


82  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

making  our  concepts  constitutive.  What  we  can  separate  in 
thought  we  conclude  can  exist  apart,  and  this  is  a  necessary  con- 
sequence of  the  doctrine  that  thought  is  reahty.  Since  man  is  a 
unity  similar  to  reality,  and  can  consequently  be  regarded  as  a 
concrete  Idee,  he  is  able  to  distinguish  the  form  and  content  of 
reality.  "Jf  being  in  existence,  or  in  consequence  of  its  exist- 
ence, it  becomes  possible  for  our  thought,  as  included  in  it,  to 
apprehend  that  which  M  is,  in  the  form  of  a  sitminum  genus  to 
which  J/ admits  of  being  subordinated."^  But  the  M  ox  reality 
itself  is  a  real  existence,  and  not  a  major  premise  or  siinumim  gcmis 
from  which  can  be  deduced  that  actual  concrete  content  of  M. 
Mis  rather  the  Idee  in  the  content,  or  the  concrete  embodiment 
of  the  Idee.  If,  however,  the  Idee  is  used  as  a  logical  category,  it 
is  a  form  of  reality,  and  not  a  genus  in  any  strict  logical  sense.^ 
In  regarding  reality  as  a  concrete  Idee,  Lotze  does  not  mean 
that  reality  is,  after  all,  thought,  or  a  concrete  thought.  It  has 
already  been  shown  that  reality  is  not  a  thought,  but  is  that 
about  which  the  thought  is  valid  or  may  be  invalid.  As  we 
shall  discover  later,  thought  or  knowledge  is  a  state  of  a  real 
being  or  subject,  and  knowledge  of  another  real  existence  or 
object,  and,  consequently,  not  itself  reality.  For  this  reason, 
therefore,  when  he  regards  reality  as  a  concrete  Idea,  he 
does  not  mean  that  reality  is  ultimately  only  a  category. 
In  a  passage  already  quoted  from  the  MediciniscJie  Psychologie, 
he  maintains  that  the  substitution  of  the  Idee  for  reality 
is  erroneous ;  ^  what,  then,  does  he  mean  by  claiming  that 
reality  is  a  concrete  Idee  ?  This  term  denotes  or  expresses 
an  effort  of  logical  thought  to  think  the  unity  of  reality.  And 
in  so  far  as  thought  {Denkeii)  is  a  real  function  of  the  self, 
its  efforts  are  availing,  and  do  succeed  in  grasping  the  nature  of 
reality,  but  just  because  human  cognition  exists  on  the  periphery 
of  being,  and,  furthermore,  because  thought  is  only  one  of  the 
functions  of  the  self,  its  conception  of  the  nature  of  reality  is  im- 
perfect, and  is,  therefore,  tentative  and  methodological.  In 
maintaining,  therefore,  that  reality  is  a  concrete  Idee,  Lotze  aims 
at  giving  a  conception   of  reality  as   a   unity.      Everyone   who 

^Met.,  \  90.  ^Ibid.,  §91.  ^  Med.  Psy.,  p.  156. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  S3 

knows  the  use  of  a  concept  can  understand  how  it  unites  many 
individual  perceptions  aud  other  concepts  under  one  law,  which 
is  the  law  of  the  unity  of  the  various  elements.  In  employing 
the  term  Idee  to  express  the  nature  of  reality,  Lotze  wishes  to 
emphasize  the  fact  of  unity  in  difference,  and  finding  a  type  of 
such  a  unity  in  the  concept,  he  avails  himself  of  the  term  Idee. 
This  point  is  clearly  maintained  in  the  discussion  on  the  nature 
of  a  real  thing.  "Reality,"  he  says,  "is  that  ideal  content, 
which,  by  means  of  what  it  is,  is  capable  of  producing  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  substance  lying  within  it,  to  which  it  belongs  as 
predicate.  ...  If  by  the  term  '  Ideal  '  we  understand  such  a 
content  as  can  be  exhaustively  reproduced  in  thought,  then  such 
an  '  ideal'  (even  if  it  be  not  apprehended  as  a  universal  proposi- 
tion, law,  or  truth,  but  as  completely  individualized,  somewhat 
like  the  idea  of  a  definite  work  of  art)  would  always  remain  a 
mere  thought ;  and  even  if  it  were  '  posited  '  as  actual,  it  would 
not,  in  this  way,  obtain  that  capability  for  producing  effects  and 
for  being  affected,  which  we  are  forced  to  consider  as  the  most 
essential  characteristic  of  '  thing.'  "  ^  "Or  expressed  somewhat 
differently  :  If  we  designate  the  essence  of  a  thing  as  Idea,  we 
must  have  regard  to  the  two-fold  iheaning  which  the  expression 
'Idea'  then  has.  For,  of  course  (i),  the  Idea,  which  we  form 
from  the  nature  of  things,  is  always  a  mere  image  of  thought, 
which,  even  if  thought  of  as  actualized,  would  still  always  be 
only  an  existing  thought,  and  not  an  energizing  thing.  We 
mean  specifically,  however,  by  this  word  (2),  just  that  essence 
of  a  thing  itself  which  is  never  to  be  metamorphosed  into  thoughts 
in  general,  or  quite  exhausted  in  them ;  and  we  call  it  Idea 
merely  because,  if  some  thought-image  of  it  is  to  be  formed,  it 
must  not  take  the  shape  of  a  monotonous  intuition,  but  rather 
that  of  a  systematized  conception,  in  which  one  law-giving  formula 
brings  a  multiplicity  of  difierent  determinations  together  into  a 
unity."  -  It  seems  obvious,  therefore,  that  the  term  Idee  is  used 
methodologically,  as  expressing  partially,  though  inadequately, 
the  nature  of  reality.  This  term  must,  indeed,  be  used  with  care, 
and  not  taken  as  an  exhaustive  or  constitutive  concept  of  reality. 

1  Gr.  d.  Met.,  \  28.  2  Cr.  d.  Met.,  I  28  n. 


/ 


^l 


84  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Useful  as  this  concept  of  the  Idee  is  in  rendering  intelligible 
the  unity  of  reality,  it  must  not  be  taken  as  the  real  existence. 
"  Things  are  not  the  thoughts  of  a  thinker,  but  their  being  is  so 
constituted  that  if  knowledge  of  their  content  were  possible  at 
all,  it  could  be  adequate  only  in  the  form  of  a  thought,  combin- 
ing many  individual  ideas  by  definite  relations  into  one  significant 
whole."  ^  Though  reality  is  represented  in  the  form  of  an  Idea, 
we  cannot jisjiy  this  Idea.  "A  thought,  in  order  to  become  a 
thing,  needs  not  merely  the  affirmation  of  reality,  which  requires 
only  to  take  it  as  it  is  found  and  posit  it,  but  the  thought  itself  lacks 
something  in  order  to  be  that  which  when  posited  would  be  a 
a  thing.  The  thought,  however  "affirmed,  posited,  or  realized, 
would  remain  an  existing  thought  and  no  more,  and  that  this  is 
riot  quite  what  we  mean  by  the  name  '-thing,'  we  certainly  feel, 
although  we  may  find  it  hard  to  point  out  what  is  lacking."  ^ 
Were  reality  a  reified  Idea  it  would  be  a  motionless  system  of 
concepts,  "  whereas  what  reality  shows  us  is  a  changing  medley^ 
of  the  most  manifold  relations  and  connections  between  the  mat- 
ter of  ideas  taking  first  one  form  and  then  another  without  regard 
to  their  place  in  the  system."^  Reality  is  not  a  static  position, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  ceaseless  becoming,  and  a  dynamic  in- 
teraction of  facts.'*  It  is  therefore  suggested  that  reality  is  an 
"operative  Idea."  Let  thought  develop,  give  it  the  power  to 
act,  then  it  can  be  maintained  that  thought  in  this  sense  is  reality. 
Lotze,  however,  rejects  this  theory  :  "  If  we  express,"  he  says, 
"  the  being  of  things  as  actively  efficacious  Idea,  we  do,  it  is  true, 
express  correctly  enough  what  we  need,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
active  efficacy  does  not  on  that  account  accrue  to  the  Idea  with 
the  ease  and  speed  with  which  we  can  bestow  it  on  the  Idea  in 
speech  by  means  of  an  adjective.  On  the  contrary,  it  remains 
doubtful  whether  the  name  of  '  operative  Idea,'  without  addition 
or  omission,  denotes  anything  which  exists  or  can  exist ;  the  pre- 
sumption is  against  its  validity,  for  it  is  plain  that  in  it  we  trans- 
fer to  ideas  regarded  not  as  thought  but  as  existent,  a  power 
which  demonstrably  belongs  to  an  Idea  only  when  it  is  thought."  '" 

^Mikr.,  II,  630.  *Met.,  H  37-67. 

2  Mikr:,  II,  631.  ^Mikr.,  II,  p,  632. 

^Logik,  ^34. 


/ 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  85 

The  Idee  is  therefore  an  indispensable  notion  or  category  which 
assists  the  mind  in  attaining  an  intelHgible  grasp  of  the  unity  of 
reahty.  This  concept  is  useful  in  thinking  reality,  but  it  must 
not  be  used  to  construct  or  deduce  reality.  It  is  an  aspect 
"  which  truth  wears  to  finite  mind,  and  not  the  very  form  of  truth 
itself.'"  Already  we  hav^e  an  experience  of  our  own  self,  and 
this  teaches  us  that  the  Idea  does  not  denote  the  highest  form  of 
unity.  The  Idea  is  only  a  logical  unity ;  but  the  self  is  a  real 
unity.^  The  self  is  an  actual  existent  being,  whereas  the  Idea 
has  validity.  Now  so  far  as  human  cognition  has  been  able  to 
grasp  reality,  the  concepts  of  existence  and  validity  are  ultimate, 
and  no  remodeling  of  'validity'  can  change  it  into  'existence';^ 
nor  can  we  predicate  the  one  of  the  other. 

This  discussion  plainly  demonstrates  that  reality  cannot  be 
understood  as  a  logical  category.  The  category  of  the  Idee 
helps  us  to  think  reality  as  a  unity,  and  so  far  as  it  enables  us  to 
■do  thfs  it  is  correct  and  a  workable  conception.  But  just  because 
it  does  not  allow  us  to  mean  by  reality  all  that  we  do  mean  by 
it,  this  concept  must  give  way  to  another  mode  of  thinking  reality. 
If  reality  is  only  a  concrete  thought  {Idee),  then  it  lacks  much  that 
we  mean  by  reality.  Reality  is  operative,  efficient,  exerts  causal 
influence,  changes,  and  is  yet  a  unity.  These  attributes  the  con- 
crete thought  does  not  account  for.  Moreover,  there  is  another  , 
reason  why  thought  is  not  reality.  Thought  is  monistic  and  static  ;  ^ 
reality  is  pluralistic  and  in  motion.  If,  therefore,  thought  were 
the  unity,  this  unity  would  be  merely  nominalistic,  and  the  world 
would  be  made  up  of  independent  real  existences.  Such  a  view 
would  resemble  that  of  Herbart.  Such  a  notion  of  reality,  how- 
ever, Lotze  rejects.  Experience  teaches  that  there  are  real  things, 
and,  therefore,  reality  must  be  regarded  as  a  unity  of  these  real 
things.     But  what  is  a  real  thing  ? 

The  self  gives  us  an  example  of  what  a  real  thing  is.  "  Our 
ideas,  feelings,  and  efforts  appear  to  be  in  their  nature  the  states 

1  Mikr.,  11,  p.  654. 

2  When  this  logical  unity  is  reified  we  have  what  Professor  A.  Seth  calls  a  ^^  focus 
imaginarius^'' :   Hei^elianism  atid  Personality,  p.  28. 

'^Logik,  ?^  316  ff;  Mikr.,  II,  pp.  327. 


86  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

of  a  being,  of  the  necessary  unity  of  which,  as  contrasted  with 
them,  we  are  immediately  conscious.  .  .  ,  For  these  inner 
events  appear  to  us  as  states  only  through  the  marvellous  nature 
of  mind,  which  can  compare  every  idea,  every  feeling,  every  pas- 
sion with  others,  and  just  because  of  this  relating  activity  with 
reference  to  them  all,  knows  itself  as  the  permanent  subject  from 
which,  under  various  conditions,  they  result."  ^ 

Because  man  is  a  self,  a  living,  acting,  knowing,  feeling,  emo- 
tional being,  he  knows  what  it  is  to  be  real ;  for  he  feels,  wills, 
acts,  and  knows  reality  in  his  own  person.  In  his  experience  he 
knows  one  real  thing.^  Now,  the  problem  arises,  can  he  inter- 
pret reality  from  this  point  of  view  ?  The  idea  or  conception  has 
been  discovered  to  be  too  abstract  and  too  rationalistic  to  ac- 
count for  reality  as  we  know  it. 

This  reinterpretation  of  reality  in  terms  of  the  self  will  be 
understood  if  we  review  the  three  possible  ways  in  which  Lotze 
conceives  that  reality  can  be  understood.^  (i)  Reality  may  cause 
an  appearance  to  arise  in  the  mind  ;  but  this  appearance  has 
only  a  subjective  validity.  On  this  theory  reality  exists,  but  is 
unknowable.  This  is  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  knowledge,  and 
we  have  already  given  Lotze's  criticism  in  chapter  II.  (2) 
Since  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  way  in  which  the  mind 
can  go  from  knowledge  of  appearance  to  knowledge  of  reality, 
this  second  theory  renounces  the  thought  of  things  in  so  far  as 
they  are  not  appearances.  This  is  the  doctrine  of  idealism,  as 
interpreted  by  Lotze.  Lotze's  criticism  of  this  conception  also 
has  been  given.*  (3)  "  Or,  finally,  we  supplement  the  notion  of 
things  in  such  away  that  it  includes  the  conditions  under  which 

1  Mikr.,  II,  p.  633  ;  Met.,  \  96  ;  Cf.  also  Krestoff :  Lotze' s  inetaph.'  Seelenbegriff, 
pp.  18-24.  Krestoff  attacks  Lotze's  conception  of  the  self  from  the  scientific  point 
of  view.  A  metaphysical  concept  is  not  adapted  to  become  a  scientific  hypothesis. 
He  maintains  that  Lotze  has  not  shown  the  necessity  for  the  soul  {^Seelendinges),  nor 
considered  whether  psychology  needs  to  inquire  after  a  substrate  (Cf.  pp.  25,  26). 

^Mikr.,  II,  pp.  354,355- 

^ Mikr.,  II,  pp.  637-647. 

*  Both  these  theories  regard  things  as  phenomena  or  as  ideas  :  Esse  =  hitelligi. 
The  logical  outcome  of  this  view  is  solipsism,  for  things  =  ideas,  and  persons  are 
known  only  as  space-filling  objects,  and  therefore  they  are  simply  ideas  in  the  tlrink- 
er's  mind. 


REALITY  AND  KNOWLEDGE.  87 

those  demands  upon  their  nature  which  we  could  not  retract  be- 
come capable  of  fulfillment.'"  This  third  path  "  amounts  to 
this,  that  we  add  to  our  idea  of  things  that  which  their  contents 
seemed  to  lack  in  order  to  make  realness  possible  for  them.  In 
fact,  if  the  doctrine  of  Idealism  reserves  to  spiritual  beings  the 
realness  which  it  refuses  to  selfless  things  (and  this  it  tacitly 
does),  what  hinders  us  from  finding  in  this  mental  nature  that 
addition  which  the  previous  empty  notion  of  things  needed  / 
in  order  to  become  the  complete  nature  of  something  real? 
Why  should  we  not  transform  the  assertion  that  only  minds  are 
real,  into  the  assertion  that  all  that  is  real  is  mind — that  thus 
things  which  seemed  to  our  merely  external  observation  as  work- 
ing blindly,  suffering  unconsciously,  and  being  self-contradictory 
through  their  incomprehensible  combination  of  selflessness  and 
realness,  are  in  fact  better  internally  than  they  seem  on  the  exterior 
— that  they,  too,  exist  not  merely  for  others  but  also  for  themselves, 
and  by  this  self-existence  are  capable  of  being  after  the  fashion  ' 
which  we  have  felt  compelled  to  require  of  them,  though  hitherto 
without  any  hope  that  our  requirement  could  be  fulfilled?"" 

The  first  object  we  know  is  the  self  or  "spiritual  subject, 
which  exercises  the  wonderful  function  not  merely  of  distinguish- 
ing sensations,  ideas,  feelings,  from  itself,  but  at  the  same  time  of 
knowing  them  as  its  own,  as  its  states,  and  which  by  means  of  its 
ow^n  unity  connects  the  series  of  successive  events  in  the  compass 
of  memory."  ^  Experience,  however,  gives  us  examples  of  other 
unities  which  are  called  things,  and  persons  ;  but  it  is  not  till  they 
are  all  regarded  as  selves  that  they  can  be  taken  as  unities  at  all, 
or  be  considered  real.  Whatever  is  real  is  mind.  It  was  neces-  y^ 
sary  to  take  account  of  things,  for  they  appeared  to  us  as  unities 
which  persist  through  change,  and  which  are  the  subject  of  vari- 
ous states.  It  is  in  order  to  understand  our  experience  that  it  is 
necessary  to  regard  the  objective  unities  as  things  or  selves.  ^/ 
Anything  which  is  not  a  self  does  not  exist.'* 

^Mikr.,   II,  637. 

^  Mikr.,   II,  642.      Cf.  Klein:  op.   cit.,  p.   63. 

"i  Met.,  ?,  96. 

*Stahlin  claims  that  Lotze's  reals  must  be  denied  existence  since  they  are  mere 
becoming  (0/.  «/.,  \  30).  His  criticism  on  this  point,  however,  is  too  brief  to  be 
quite  intelligible. 


88  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Since  now  the  conception  of  the  Idee  fails  to  explain  reality,  a 
new  difficulty  arises,  for  the  world  seems  to  be  a  pluralism.  How 
can  unity  be  conceived  ?  If  Lotze  had  regarded  things  as  inde- 
pendent reals,  his  conception  of  reality  would  have  been  the  same 
as  Herbart's.  This  independence  would  have  despiritualized  the 
reals,  and  have  made  them  mere  '  position.'  ^  Furthermore,  abso- 
lute pluralism  is  self-contradictory,  for  pluralism  has  meaning  only 
in  reference  to  unity. 

The  first  way  in  which  a  unity  of  selves  can  be  conceived  is 
under  the  concept  of  '  relation.'  Real  things  stand  in  relation  to 
one  another.  This  conception,  Lotze  finds,  is  not  satisfactory, 
(i)  It  seems  to  imply  that  the  terms  related  may  exist  prior  to 
the  relation.  But  he  maintains  that  position  is  meaningless  apart 
from  relations.  Further,  if  things  exist  apart  from  relations  it  is 
inconceivable  how  they  could  enter  into  relations.^  (2)  '  Rela- 
tion '  is  a  methodological  concept,  and  does  not  serve  to  denote 
precisely  how  one  thing  is  connected  with  another.  It  must, 
therefore,  be  guardedly  used  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  apply 
it  to  the  real.  Most  of  our  concepts  of  relation  have  been  drawn 
from  the  spatial  attributes  of  things.^  But  space  is  only  a  form 
of  perception,  and  does  not  apply  directly  to  reality.*  Conse- 
quently, concepts  and  types  of  connection  found  in  spatial  intui- 
tion cannot  be  attributed  just  as  they  stand  to  real  things.  The 
term  relation,  drawn  as  it  is  from  the  spatial  manifestation  of 
things,  carries  with  it  the  notion  of  a  '  between.'  Relations  are 
between  things  which  otherwise  would  be  unrelated.  But  to  be 
related  they  must  be  held  apart  and  yet  held  together.  This  is 
an  example  of  the  Hegelian  antithesis  in  every  concept.  Re- 
lation implies  a  '  between,'  and  is  the  work  of  the  conscious 
subject.^  In  perception  this  idea  of  relation  is  given  as  a  spatial 
between.  As  thought  rises  higher  it  carries  its  imagery  with  it, 
and  thinks  of  relation  as  a  tie  or  bond  between  things.     And  just 

1^/^/.,  §§8-14. 

^  Met.,  II  10,  13. 

^ Mikr.,  II,  617-623;  Met.,  \\  79-81  ;  Logik,  337,  338. 

^Met.,  §  113  ;  Mikr.,  II,  603  ff. 

*  Klein  :  op.  cit,,  p.  58  ;   Green  :   Proleg.  to  Eth.,  ^§  28,  29. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  89 

as  the  spatial  'between'  is  the  work  of  the  subject,  so  the  concep- 
tion of  '  between  '  is  still  a  methodological  conception  or  a  Hilfs- 
hvpothcse  which  the  finite  mind  uses  to  make  intelligible  the  real 
world.  "  For  it  is  thought  and  thought  only  which,  passing 
from  the  idea  a  to  the  idea  d,  and  becoming  conscious  of  the 
transition,  creates  that  which  we  call  here  a  '  between,'  and  pre- 
sents it  as  a  mental  picture  which  thought  finds  intelligible  ;  ac- 
cordingly it  must  always  be  a  vain  endeavor  to  attempt  to 
ascribe  to  this  relation,  which  at  once  separates  a  and  b  and 
brings  them  together,  and  which  is  nothing  more  than  the  recol- 
lection of  an  act  of  thought  performable  only  by  the  unity  of  our 
consciousness — to  ascribe,  I  say,  to  this  relation  a  real  validity 
in  the  sense  of  being  something  in  itself  apart  from  the  conscious- 
ness which  thinks  it."  ^  For  sensuous  spatial  connections,  which 
hold  only  of  phenomena,  have  been  substituted  "  supersensuous 
intellectual  relations."  But  a  supersensuous  intellectual  relation 
is  practically  on  the  same  level  as  spatial  relations,  and  can- 
not be  taken  as  expressing  the  nature  of  reality,  though  it  is 
sufficient  to  allow  us  a  fragmentary  knowledge  of  real  things.^ 
(3)  A  third  objection  to  the  notion  of  relation  as  a  constitutive 
principle  of  reality  maintains  that  it  leads  to  an  infinite  regress,  for 
if  a  thing  depends  upon  relations,  or  if  action  of  one  thing  on 
another  depends  upon  relations,  then  this  dependency  has  noth- 
ing to  rest  upon.^  Lotze  therefore  concludes  that  the  concept  of 
relation  cannot  be  applied  to  reality. 

Relation  is  a  concept  which  applies  to  the  spatial  world,  and 
also  to  our  knowledge  of  the  world.  But  the  spatial  world  is 
plainly  our  mental  construction  of  reality,^  and  is,  therefore,  our 
sense- knowledge  of  the  real  world.  For  this  reason,  then,  the 
term  '  relation '  is  applicable  only  to  the  structure  of  our  sense 
knowledge,  and  should  not  be  referred  to  the  connection  of 
things  as  they  are  known  to  the  deity,  or  even  as  they  can  be 
thought  by  human  minds.  Nevertheless,  knowledge  affirms  that 
things  are  related.  The  question  then  may  be  raised  :  How  can 
it  be  maintained  that  things  are  not  in  relation  ?    This  may  seem 

^Logik,  ?  338.  ^  Mikr.,  II,  620. 

2Cf.  Mikr.,  II,  635  ;   Met.,  \  I16.  ^  Met.,  Bk.  II. 


90  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

to  make  things  unknowable  :  for  if  things  are  known  as  in  rela- 
tion, and  if  in  reality  they  are  not  in  relation,  they  must  be  un- 
knowable. If,  indeed,  this  were  a  correct  statement  of  Lotze's 
position  it  would  be  useless  to  endeavor  to  follow  him  any 
further.  But  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  this  is  Lotze's  position. 
Here,  also,  it  is  true  that  his  point  of  view  will  be  quite  intelligible 
if  we  keep  in  mind  his  methodological  use  of  conceptions.  To 
human  consciousness  things  appear  in  relation,  alongside  of  one 
another,  but  Lotze  maintains  that  if  it  were  possible  for  us  to 
have  complete  knowledge,  then  we  would  see  them  as  they  are, 
and  we  would  then  know  that  the  term  relation  comes  short  of 
expressing  the  connection  in  which  things  stand  to  one  another. 
Reality  is  fuller,  and  deeper,  and  richer  than  its  appearance  to 
us  in  our  knowledge  would  indicate.^  It  is  not  totally  different 
from  what  we  know  it  to  be,  but  it  is  vastly  different.  Notwith- 
standing its  limits,  our  knowledge  is  valid  so  far  as  it  goes,  and 
represents  aspects  of  reality.  Our  union  with  reality  causes  it  to 
be  translated  into  our  perceptions,  ideas,  judgments,  and  syllo- 
gisms f  and  the  more  perfect  our  cognition  the  more  adequately 
is  reality  known.  The  objection  to  making  relation  a  constitutive 
concept  is  not  that  it  is  totally  inadequate,  but  that  it  lacks  the 
completeness  of  a  constitutive  concept.  If  it  is  applied  to  reality 
it  cannot  be  thought  without  contradiction,  which  proves  that  it  is 
a  Hilfsbegriff?  Its  character  as  a  relation  depends  on  our  limited 
knowledge  of  reality,  and  on  the  sensuous  appearance  of  reality 
to  human  consciousness.  However,  there  is  something  in  reality 
which  this  concept  inadequately  represents,  for  the  real  is  known 
in  finite  concepts.  What  it  is  in  reality  that  corresponds  to  our 
interpretation  of  its  nature  as  a  relation,  is  of  the  nature  of  a  j-ela- 
tioUy  but  it  is  more  than  a  relation.  "  This  supposed  '  relation  ' 
can  only  subsist  independently  of  our  consciousness,  or  objec- 
tively, if  it  is  something  more  than  relation,  and  then  it  subsists 
not  betzveen  a  and  b  (for  this  *  between '  has  no  existence  except 
in  us),  but  rather  in  them,  as  an  influence  which  they  reciprocally 

^Met.,  g|76,  77. 

'^Met.,  \l  81,  105,  116,  123,  170;  Logik,  I  328;  Mik)-.,  II,  pp.  611  ff. 
3  Herbart  and  Bradley  both  maintain  that  appearance  is  not  reality  because  it  is 
self-contradictory  if  taken  as  real. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  9 1 

exert  upon  and  receive  from  each  other.  It  is  merely  for  us 
when  we  think  it  that  such  inlluence  takes  logical  shape  in  the 
weakened  form  of  a  relation,  which  no  longer  expresses  its  full 
significance."^  "  We  saw  that  the  notion  of  a  condition  is  inade- 
quate to  denote  that  which  we  mean  by  a  relation  which  subsists 
in  actual  fact  between  two  real  elements  ;  so  to  subsist,  it  would 
have  to  be  more  than  a  relation,  it  would  have  to  be  nothing  less 
than  interaction.  This  being  so,  it  was  in  that  real  connection 
between  the  real  elements  that  the  cause  resided  which  brought 
their  phenomenal  appearances  for  us  into  that  particular  formal 
relation  which  we  now,  employing  a  merely  logical  term,  call  a 
conditioning  of  the  one  by  the  other."^  "In  this  case  the  con- 
clusion is  unavoidable  that  this  objective  relation  C,  to  which  we 
appeal,  cannot  be  anything  that  takes  place  bettvccn  a  and  b,  and 
that  just  for  that  reason  it  is  not  a  relation  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  term,  but  more  than  this."^  Consequently,  Lotze  con- 
cludes, interaction  of  one  real  thing  on  another  expresses  the 
nature  of  reality  more  truly  than  does  the  idea  of  relation. 
"  Apart  from  consciousness  "  relations  "  have  not  themselves  an 
independent  existence  betiveen  the  things  related  or  relatable,  but 
there  is  a  foundation  for  them  in  the  nature  of  things  which  are 
so  framed  that  consciousness  is  constrained  and  enabled  by  their 
influence  upon  it,  to  connect  and  estimate  by  means  of  these  re- 
lations the  impressions  which  those  things  make  upon  it."* 
y  Reality,  therefore,  is  an  organization  of  selves  which  interact 
on  one  another.  The  implications  of  this  theory  do  not  belong 
to  our  subject,  but  are  developed  by  Lotze. ^ 

All  things  belong  together  and  are  in  interaction.  Everything 
is  therefore  at  once  active  and  passive.  Since,  however,  things 
interact,  a  change  in  one  implies  a  change  in  another.      If,  for 

^Logik,  ?338. 

2Z^^^•/^•,  §345. 

^Met.,  I  81. 

<Mikr.,  II,  p.  619;  Cf.  also  Gr.  d.  Met.,  \  20. 

^Gr.  d.  Religionsphil.,  W  20-32;  Met.,  \\  71  ff.  Stahlin  controverts  this  po- 
sition, (l)  Reals,  he  finds,  are  viodi  of  Infinite  Substance,  yet  independent,  which 
is  a  contradiction  (0/.  cit.,  §  28).  (2)  There  can  be  no  unity  of  reals  in  an  Infinite 
Substance,  for  substance  is  that  which  abides  in  change  whereas  the  reals  become. 
Becoming  is  self-contradictory  (^  29). 


/ 


V- 


92  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

example,  A  and  B  react  upon  one  another,  when  A  changes  from 
a  state  «  to  a  state  a,  B  will  change  from  a  state  <5  to  a  state  /9. 
In  this  interaction,  to  be  sure,  A  is  not  solely  active  and  B 
merely  passive.  But  they  are  at  once  both  active  and  passive. 
Consequently,  when  A  changes  from  a  to  a,  it  is  not  through  A 
alone  that  this  change  arises,  for  A  does  not  stand  alone,  and 
cannot  be  regarded  apart  from  the  rest  of  reality.  Moreover, 
when  B  changes  from  b  to  ^9,  through  the  causal  activity  of  A,  it 
is  active,  and  from  its  own  nature  contributes  to  the  changes 
from  ^to  /?.  For  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  A  alone  to  produce  a 
change  from  b  to  /?.  This  is  obvious  when  A's  relation  (to  use  this 
term)  to  C  is  considered.  Under  these  conditions  A  will  not 
change  b  into  ^,  but  its  effect  upon  C'will  cause  C  to  change 
from  state  c  to  state  j-.  One  thing,  therefore,  cannot  change  from 
one  state  into  another  without  a  corresponding  change  taking 
place  in  another  thing  with  which  it  is  in  interaction.  "A  state 
a,  which  takes  place  in  an  element  A,  must,  for  the  very  reason 
that  it  is  in  A,  likewise  be  an  *  affection  '  in  B ;  but  it  does  not 
necessarily  have  to  become  such  an  '  affection  '  of  ^  by  means  of 
an  influence  issuing  from  A."  ^  Thus  it  occurs  that  a  state  of 
one  thing  has  its  equivalent  in  another  being.  In  other  words, 
one  object  produces  a  state  in  another  which  corresponds  or  is 
equivalent  to  the  amount  of  change  in  the  first.  This  can  occur 
only  on  "  the  assumption  that  all  individual  things  are  substan- 
tially One.  .  .  .  The  formal  consequence  of  this  assumption  is 
as  follows  :  The  element  A  is  only  =  i^/(,),  the  element  B  =  M^^  ~^, 
etc.  Every  state  a  which  takes  place  in  A  is  therefore  likewise 
a  state  of  this  M;  and,  by  means  of  this  state,  Mis  necessitated 
according  to  its  own  nature  to  produce  a  succeeding  state  /9  which 
makes  its  appearance  as  a  state  of  B,  but  which  is  in  truth  a 
state  of  this  M,  by  means  of  which  its  preceding  modification 
Mf^y-^  is  changed."  ^  Now  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  is  only 
a  formal  or  a  schematic  representation  of  what  Lotze  means  by 
an  organization  of  real  beings.  '  His  object  it  not  to  show  ho7JV 
they  are  related,  and  hozu  such  a  unity  is  possible.  Nor  is  it  his 
purpose  to  construct  a  universe  according  to  a  materialistic  or 
1  Gr.  d.  Met.,  \  48.  2  Qy^  d.  Met.,  ^  48. 


'  REALITY  AXD   KNOWLEDGE.  93 

viechanical  plan.  The  real  selves  with  which  he  is  dealing 
are  not  lifeless  bits  of  a  huge  machine,  but  living  beings  ; 
and  the  unity  which  he  believes  in  is  a  uitity  which  he  can  think 
in  outline  only.  We  miss  his  purpose  if  we  think  he  is  striving  to 
understand  the  essence  of  this  unity  and  discover  how  it  works. 
His  aim  is  much  less  ambitious.  He  is  only  eager  to  maintain 
that  reality  is  a  unity,  and  that  it  is  only  in  and  through  their 
ultimate  unity  that  things  can  interact  or  have  any  influence  upon 
one  another.  If  A  and  B  did  not  belong  to  the  same  universe, 
and  share  the  same  nature,  if,  in  other  words,  they  were  not  ulti- 
mately one — in  some  way  that  we  do  not  and  cannot  compre- 
hend— they  could  not  be  in  interaction,  and  could  not  affect  one 
another  ;  nor  could  the  one  be  aware  of  the  existence  of  the 
other.  This  one  reality  is  a  unity  of  the  many,  for  both  interac- 
tion and  the  many  imply  unity. ^  Those  who  maintain  that  this 
unity  is  a  "  substantial  One,"  and  an  hypostatized  conception,  by 
no  means  do  jastice  to  Lotze's  thought."  Moreover,  this  criticism 
appears  to  disregard  Lotze's  method,  his  tentative  procedure,  and 
his  methological  use  of  concepts.  Lotze,  himself,  does  not  pre- 
tend to  have  "  privileged  concepts  "  which  express  the  whole  na- 
ture of  reality ;  nor  does  he  maintain  that  his  concept  of  unity  is 
adequate  to  exhaust  the  nature  of  reality.^  All  he  hopes  to  do 
is  to  suggest,  and  make  clear  what  he  means  by  reality.* 


n.  From  the  first  part  of  this  chapter  we  have  learned  that 
reality  is  a  system  or  organization  of  selves.  This  doctrine  conse- 
quently can  be  stated  in  four  propositions  :  (i)  A  real  thing  admits 
of  change,  and  unifies  changing  states  f  '(2)  "  Reality  is  that  ideal 
content,  which,  by  means  of  what  it  is,  is  capable  of  producing 
the  appearance  oi  ^/substance  lying  within  it,  to  which  it  belongs 
as  a  predicate;"''  (3)  "  Reality  means  for  us  the  being  of  a  some- 

1  J/^zf.,  \\  6S-75. 

2e_  g, ^  Schiller:  Lotze^ s  Monisvi,  Phil.  Rev.,  V,  3,  pp.  225-245. 

3Cf.  Klein:   Op.  cit.,  pp.  56,  57. 

*Mikr.,  II,  p.  576  ;  Met.,  H  73-75  ;    Gr.  d.  Religionsphil.,  §  21. 

^Met.,  \\  24,  96. 

6  Gr.  d.  Met.,  \  28  ;  Cf.  Met.,  g  31. 


94  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

.what  which  is  capable  of  being  affected  and  of  producing  effects  ;"^ 
/  {^  "It  is  in  the  consciousness  of  unity,  and  not  in  the  mere 
unity  itself,  that  the  essence  of  things  lies."^  "  Only  by  sharing 
this  character  of  the  spiritual  nature  can  they  [things]  fulfil  the 
general  requirements  which  must  be  fulfilled  in  order  to  constitute 
a  thing.  "^ 

All  these  metaphysical  results  are  of  vital  importance  for  Lotze's 
theory  of  knowledge.  All  real  things  are  spiritual,  and  are  in 
interaction  with  one  another.  This  interaction  is  mutual,  and  de- 
pends equally  upon  each  member  of  the  unity,  and  upon  the  spiri- 
tual nature  of  each.  If  now  we  change  our  point  of  view  from 
that  of  ontology  to  that  of  logicj'^very  real  thing  is  seen  to  be  at 
on'ce  both  an  object  and  a  subject.  If  interaction  is  the  joint  or 
reciprocal  action  of  objects  or  things,  it  is  equally  true  that  inter- 
action is  the  joint  or  reciprocal  action  of  subjects  or  beings  which 
are  aware  of  their  union  with  other  subjects.  Subject  and  object 
are  consequently  only  relative  terms,  and  do  not  connote  meta- 
physically different  kinds  of  beings.  These  terms,  like  all  other 
categories,  are  only  Hilfsbcgriffc,  and  are  not  constitutive.  For 
far  too  long  a  time  they  have  been  regarded  as  constitutive  of  two 
different  kinds  of  existence,  whereas  in  truth  they  denote  only 
different  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  kind  of  existence.  In  so 
far  as  they  are  known  they  may  be  regarded  as  objects  ;  but  in 
so  far  as  they  are  aware  of  other  beings,  or  of  their  own  states, 
they  are  subjects.  Now  this  is  the  only  conclusion  from  Lotze's 
conception  of  reality. 

This  doctrine  is  in  plain  contrast  to  that  of  the  Kantian  meta- 
physic.  And  as  the  Kantian  conception  is  prevalent  in  the  philoso- 
phy of  this  century,  it  will  be  well  to  discover  just  wherein  Lotze's 
theory  differs  from  it.  Kant  claimed  that  wherever  the  categories 
are  applied  to  things-in-themselves,  i.  e.,  to  real  things,  an 
antinomy  arises.  This  antinomy  is  removed  when  the  cate- 
gories are  restricted  in  their  use  to  the  phenomenal  world. 
Causality,  therefore,  on  this  theory,  obtains  only  in  phenomena. 
It  denotes  a  relation  of  phenomena  to  one  another,  but  cannot  be 
applied   to  things-in-themselves,   nor    to  egos,  nor  to  the  rela- 

1  Gr.  d.  Met.,  §  26.  2Tuch  :  oJ>.  cit.,  p.  44.  ^  Met.,  I  96. 


/■ 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  95 

tion  of  the  ego  and  the  non-ego.  Furthermore,  since  the  object 
spoken  of  means,  generally,  the  object  of  thought,  the  object  is 
the  phenomenal  object.  Consequently  causality  holds  between 
objects.  The  subject  however  is  never  a  phenomenon,  and  can 
never  be  a  phenomenon  ;  therefore,  causality  does  not  apply  to 
it,  nor  can  it  apply  to  it.  The  subject  is  the  source  of  the  cate- 
gory, and  for  that  reason  the  category  cannot  condition  it.  Sub- 
ject and  object  are  therefore  different  in  nature.  The  former  is 
self-consciousness,  an  active  living  being,  whereas  the  latter  is  a 
creation  of  the  subject,  a  mere  phenomenon  which,  therefore,  has 
no  existence  on  its  own  account.  Thus,  this  theory  concludes 
that  only  objects  can  stand  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect, 
and  that  consciousness  can  never  be  anything  but  a  subject.  It 
is  impossible  on  this  theory  for  a  subject  and  an  object  to  be 
causally  related  ;  for  were  they  so  related  the  subject  would  cease 
to  be  a  subject,  and  become  an  object.  Neither  can  two  or  more 
subjects  be  related  causally  ;  for  only  objects  can  be  related  in  this 
way.  For  the  subject,  however,  according  to  this  doctrine,  to 
become  an  object,  it  would  have  to  become  a  phenomenon.  As  a 
subject  it  exists  out  of  time,  but  a  phenomenon  exists  only  in 
time.  A  subject  exists  above  the  categories,  and  is  the  source  of 
the  categories  ;  but  a  phenomenon  is  under  the  categories,  and  is 
conditioned  by  them.  A  subject  is  real,  and  exists  on  its  own 
account ;  a  phenomenon  on  the  contrary  does  not  exist,  but  oc- 
curs /;/  a  subject.  A  subject,  therefore,  can  not  become  a  phe- 
nomenon, and  is  necessarily  outside  the  categories.  It  cannot 
enter  into  causal  relations  with  any  existence  without  ceasing  to 
exist. 

Such  was  the  account  of  causality  given  by  Kant.  If,  how- 
ever, we  examine  this  theory  it  will  be  seen  to  be  unsatisfactory, 
and  must  be  supplemented  by  some  such  notion  as  Lotze  has 
adopted,  (i)  According  to  Kant,  only  objects  are  causally  re- 
lated. Subjects  do  not  exist  in  causal  relation.  By  object  he 
means  a  phenomenon,  or  a  complex  of  phenomena.  Conse- 
quently, causality  holds  only  between  phenomena.  Further, 
phenomena  have  no  existence  outside  of  the  mind  which  thinks 
them,  therefore  causality  applies  only  to  the  presentations  in  con- 


96       .  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

sciousness.  It  is  plainly  only  a  relation  between  the  parts  of  our 
knowledge,  and  does  not  apply  to  objects  at  all.  (2)  Because 
causality  is  within  phenomena;  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any 
conceivable  relation  in  which  the  subject  stands  to  the  rest  of  the 
world.  Nor  is  it  clear  how  knowledge  can  arise,  since  the  object 
as  a  real  thing  is  not  related  to  the  subject.  Kant  himself  was 
convinced  that  subject  and  object  are  causally  related,  though  he 
did  not  seem  to  be  conscious  of  the  contradiction.  But  Fichte 
pointed  out  the  contradiction.^  (3)  Those  who  maintain  that 
causality  exists  only  between  phenomena,  and  cannot  apply  to 
things -in-themselves,  do  not  inform  us  how  reality  is  a  whole, 
and  in  what  relation  the  various  subjects  are.  (4)  This  concep- 
tion seems  to  rob  causality  of  all  its  significance.  By  causal  con- 
nection we  mean  that  one  real  thing  exerts  an  influence  upon 
another  real  thing.  We  think  of  it  as  a  power  or  an  influence 
which  one  thing  exerts  upon  another.  Causality  is  dynamic, 
and  consists  in  an  interaction  of  real  things,  whatever  they  may 
be.  If,  on  the  contrary,  causality  is  only  a  relation  between  states 
of  consciousness,  and  not  within  real  things,  its  whole  mean- 
ing seems  to  have  vanished.  The  plausibility  of  this  no- 
tion of  causality  as  obtaining  between  phenomena  rests  upon 
the  fact  that  most  philosophy  since  Berkeley's  time  has  re- 
garded subjective  presentations  as  real  objects.  It  seems  all 
right  to  maintain  that  causality  holds  between  objects  or  be-' 
tween  phenomenal  objects.  But  this  ostensible  validity  depends 
upon  an  association  which  the  word  '  object'  carries  with  it. 
When,  however,  in  place  of  the  term  '  object'  its  equivalent,  a 
'state  of  consciousness,'  or  a  system  of  such  states,  is  used,  the 
specious  validity  of  the  doctrine  is  at  once  perceived.  Neverthe- 
less, this  is  the  logical  conclusion  of  the  Kantian  position.  (5) 
Lastly,  this  doctrine  not.  only  extends  a  logical  principle  and 
uses  it  in  an  ontological  sense,  but  it  does  worse  than  this.  If 
it  only  used  a  methodological  conception  as  constitutive  it  would 
utter  a  partial  truth.  But  this  view  does  not  extend  a  concept, 
but  reifies  it.  When  we  think  an  object,  it  is  a  real  object. 
There  is   no   object  z«  consciousness.      What  is  in   conscious- 

1  Sdtnmtliche  Werke,  I,  p.  4S6. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  •  "  97 

ness  is  knowledge  about  an  object.  But  on  the  Kantian  theory 
this  is  not  so  ;  there  is  no  object  except  the  phenomenal  ap- 
pearance in  consciousness.  This  appearance  is  called  the  ob- 
ject. Now  phenomena  occur  in  time,  /.  c,  these  objects  occur  in 
consciousness  in  a  temporal  series.  Causality,  therefore,  is  the 
temporal  sequence  of  phenomena  according  to  a  rule.'  It  does 
not  connote  influence  or  a  dynamic  effect  of  any  kind.  How 
could  a  phenomenon  exert  an  influence  upon  another  phenome- 
non ?  For  this  reason  causality  taken  as  a  temporal  succession 
of  phenomena  according  to  a  rule,  is  not  a  concept  of  the  relation 
of  things  which  are  not  phenomena  but  real.  Since  then  it  is  not 
a  concept  of  things  it  cannot  be  extended  to  things.  Were  it  a 
methodological  concept  of  the  causal  relation  of  things,  then  it 
could  be  extended,  but  of  course  inadequately.  It  would  be  the 
same  fallacy  if  we  were  to  use  a  psychological  law  of  association 
as  a  law  of  the  relation  of  things. 

Lotze  abandons  the  notion  that  causality  is  a  relation  between 
phenomena,  and  maintains  on  the  other  hand  that  real  beings  are 
causally  related.  Things,  not  phenomena,  stand  in  causal  union. 
This  union,  as  has  been  shown,  is  interaction. 

Since,  indeed,  interaction,  or  causality,  is  the  way  in  which 
real  things  exist  together,  all  real  things  causally  affect  each 
other,  and  produce  changing  states  in  one  another.  But  real 
things  are  for  Lotze  either  subjects  or  objects  according  to  the 
standpoint  from  which  we  view  them.  Consequently  objects  are 
causally  related.  The  same,  however,  is  true  of  subjects.  Sub- 
jects are  causally  related,  and  interact  on  one  another.  Further, 
speaking  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  subject,  which  regards  or 
may  regard  all  other  real  beings  as  objects,  we  can  maintain  that 
subjects  and  objects  are  causally  related,  and  interact  upon  one 
another.  For  what  is  held  to  be  a  subject  from  one  point  of  view 
\i.  e.,  as  knowing]  is  from  another  point  of  view  an  object  [/.  e.,  as 
known].  Subject  and  object  interact.  Referring  to  Kant,  Lotze 
remarks  :  "  Now  it  is,  indeed,  true  that  Kant  has  made  the  idea  of 
an  interaction  of  things  upon  us  impossible,  since  he  undertook 
the  fruitless  task  of  ascribing  to  the  course  of  time  only  a  subjec- 

1  Cf.  Kant's  Schema  of  Causality. 


98  *  LOTZKS   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

tive  validity,  and  since,  likewise,  the  concept  of  causality  is  ap- 
plicable only  under  the  schema  in  temporal  succession."^ 

Before  we  proceed  to  develop  the  conception  of  the  interaction 
of  subject  and  object,  let  us  notice  two  objections  to  the  posi- 
tip'n  which  Lotze  holds — that  things  are  causally  related  with  the 
^/^ubject  which  knows  them.  (i)  Green  accepts  the  Kantian 
dictwn  that  the  '  understanding  makes  nature.'  Kant,  however, 
added  to  this  dictiwi  the  qualifying  phrase  :  "  out  of  a  material 
which  it  does  not  make."  Green,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  come 
to  any  terms  with  a  '  material '  ;  ^  for  nothing  can  be  causally  re- 
lated to  the  self  ^  There  is  therefore  no  material  in  the  construc- 
tion of  nature.  Nature  is  not  real  in  the  sense  that  a  self  is  real ; 
but  it  is  real  when  its  parts  are  related  as  they  appear  to  be  re- 
lated.^ But  the  parts  are  only  phenomena,  and  not  real  existences.^ 
Since,  however,  causality  is  only  in  nature,  it  holds  only  between 
phenomena,  and  not  between  real  existences  such  as  selves.  But 
this  theory  provides  for  no  unity  of  the  world  in  any  real  sense. 
What  is  unified,  however,  is  the  experience  of  a  single  self,  and 
that  is  all.  To  maintain  that  real  things  or  selves  are  not  caus- 
ally related,  because  causality  is  a  relation  which  exists  only  be- 
tween phenomena  begs  the  whole  question.  (2)  Another  objec- 
1/  tion  we  will  notice  because  it  is  made  with  direct  reference  to 
Lotze.  Mr.  Eastwood,  in  his  articles  in  Mind  already  mentioned, 
affirms  that  Lotze  adopts  the  prejudice  of  common  sense,  and 
asserts  the  actual  existence  of  real  things  independent  of  the 
knowing  mind.  Furthermore,  he  claims  that,  according  to  Lotze, 
these  existing  things  produce  ideas  and  thoughts  in  the  subject 
according  to  the  general  principle  of  cause  and  effect.  Against 
this  position  of  Lotze' s,  Mr.  Eastwood  holds  that  only  objects 
can  stand  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  and  that  con- 
sciousness can  never  be  anything  but  a  subject.''  We  have 
already  seen  that  this  criticism  will  not  hold  ;  but  let  us  ex- 
amine briefly  Mr.  Eastwood's  own  position.      By  an  object  Mr. 

1  Gesch.  d.  Ph.,  I  36. 

^Cf.  Seth,  A.  :    Hegelianis7n  and  Personality,  pp.  79-83. 

3  Green  :    Proleg.  to  Eth.,  H  38-54, 

*  Green  :  Ibid.,  §  12  ff. 

^Ibid.,  I  52. 

^Loc.  cit.,  pp.  313-14. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  99 

Eastwood  means  a  manifold  of  particulars  united  by  thought  (p. 
475).  Causality  therefore  obtains  between  the  elements  in  a  presen- 
tation. Since  then  consciousness  is  not  a  manifold,  but  a  unity, 
causality  cannot  attach  to  it.  We  may  conclude  from  this  sur- 
vey of  the  doctrine  that  causality  belongs  to  phenomena  only, 
that  this  theory  is  based  upon  the  notion  that  appearance  or 
knowledge  is  reality.  Phenomena  are  taken  to  be  real  things, 
and  phenomena  seem  on  this  view  to  depend  entirely  on  con- 
sciousness. Thought  is  reality.  But  this  doctrine  rests  plainly 
upon  a  dualism.  According  to  it,  there  are  two  kinds  of  reality  : 
(i)  phenomena,  i.  c,  nature  ;  (2)  selves  or  self-consciousnesses. 
But  the  reality  of  nature  turns  out  to  be  no  reality  at  all,  but  only 
an  appearance  in  a  subject. 

Returning  now  to  Lotze's  doctrine  of  the  interaction  of  subject 
and  object,  we  will  endeavor  to  show  how  his  theory  of 
knowledge  rests  upon  his  metaphysic.  "  Cognition  is  only  the 
particular  case  of  such  action  between  things  and  the  ideating 
mind."*  This  thesis  it  is  our  purpose  to  exhibit  in  detail.  It 
will  be  necessary,  however,  to  keep  in  mind  what  Lotze  means 
by  things.  Kant  and  Post-Kantians  mean  by  things  phenomena. 
Things  in  this  sense,  however,  cannot  be  in  causal  relation  to 
the  self,  and  can  never  be  a  cause  of  phenomena.  But,  as  we 
have  seen,  Lotze  me^fis  by  things  something  entirely  different 
form  phenomena.  i/Things  are  selves,  and  have  real  existence ; 
whereas  phenomena  exist  only  in  a  thing  or  a  self,  and  as  states  of 
a  self  they  are  knowledge  of  that  self  or  of  selves,  or  of  things  in 
interaction  with  that  self.  The  criticism  therefore  which  affirms 
that  things  cannot  causally  affect  the  self  because  causality  be- 
longs only  to  phenomena,  is  not  a  criticism  of  Lotze ;  for  it  uses 
terms  in  a  way  totally  different  from  that  in  which  he  employed 
them. 

Lotze  never  doubts  that  things  act  upon  the  subject,  and 
consequently,  his  problem  is  not  to  show  tJiat  this  is  possible, 
but  his  aim  is  to  explain  in  outline  how  this  relation  can  best  be 
thought.  We  have  already  seen  that  this  relation  between  sub- 
ject and  object  is  not  properly  a  relation  at  all,  but  is  more  than 

^Mikr.,  II,    348. 


lOO  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

a  relation,  it  is  interaction.  But  let  us  give  Lotze's  own  account 
of  this  process.  As  he  himself  says,  his  aim  is  to  render  intel- 
ligible '•  the  mode  in  which  the  object  of  knowledge  may  be  con- 
ceived as  operating  upon  the  subject  which  apprehends  it.^  "  To 
/make  his  meaning  plain,  Lotze  gives  an  express  statement  of  his 
V  conception  of  interaction.  "  Whenever^  between  two  elements  y^ 
and  B  of  whatever  kind  any  event  which  we  call  the  influence  of 
A  upon  B  occurs,  such  influence  never  consists  in  a  constituent 
element,  or  predicate,  or  state  a  separating  itself  from  A  to  which 
it  belonged,  and  just  as  it  is,  and  without  undergoing  any  change 
passing  over  to  B,  to  attach  itself  thenceforth  to  this  new  object, 
or  be  adopted  by  it,  or  become  one  of  its  states  (however  we 
like  to'phrase  it)  ;  what  happens  is,  that  a,  the  property  residing, 
or  change  arising  in  A,  becomes  the  cause  by  reason  of  which, 
given  a  relation  C,  already  established  or  coming  for  the  first 
time  into  play  between  A  and  B,  B  also  is  necessitated  in  its  turn 
to  evolve  out  of  its  own  nature  and  as  a  part  of  itself  its  new 
state  b.  .  ,  .  That  principle  however  gives  us  this  result,  that 
the  form  of  the  effect  b  can  never  be  independent  of  the  object  B 
which  experiences  it  ;  it  changes  with  that  object  ;  and  the  same 
relation  C  which  obtained  between  A  and  B,  will  as  between  A 
and  B'  produce  in  B'  a  new  effect  b'  quite  distinct  from  b.  As  little 
is  the  effect  b  independent  of  the  nature  of  the  active  agency  A  or  of 
the  relation  C ;  it  changes  with  both  ;  if  ^'  instead  oi  A  enters  with 
B  into  the  relation  C,  it  will  become  /?,  and  ^'  if  B  and  A  enter  into 
the  relation  C.  But  all  these  different  b,  b',  ^,  /3'  will  make  up 
in  themselves  a  complete  series  of  events  which  are  only  possible 
in  B,  and  A  and  C  are  only  to  be  regarded  as  exciting  causes,  de- 
termining which  of  the  many  effects  of  which  the  nature  of  B  is 
susceptible  are  to  be  realized  at  a  given  moment,  and  in  what 
order  they  are  to  come  about."  ^  Now  when  Lotze  has  given  this 
definite  notion  of  the  nature  of  interaction,  and  has  shown  that, 
when  two  things  interact,  the  resulting  effect  is  due  to  both 
things,  he  asserts  that  "  the  operation  of  objects  of  knowledge 
upon  a  subject  apprehending  them  comes  under  this  general 
principle."^ 

^Logik,  I  325.  ^Ibid.,  I  325.  ^Ibid.,  §326. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  lOI 

When  two  or  more  objects  act  upon  one  another,  they  re- 
ciprocally affect  each  other,  and  states  of  each  are  produced  which 
depend  upon  the  two  objects  and  their  mode  of  interaction,  or  their 
relation  to  one  another.  But  as  all  thinijs  are  objects  or  subjects, 
according  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  we  regard  them,  we  may 
say  that  when  a  subject  is  brought  into  connection  with  an  object, 
the  latter  acts  upon  the  former,  and  the  result  of-  f\vi\i:  i-siivtual' 
or  combined  influence  is  that  states  are  aroused  in 'each. ^  'Sinc^ie:;  : 
however,  we  wish  to  consider  the  object  or  the  self  Which  is" 
taken  as  the  subject,  it  will  be  well  to  confine  attention  to  the 
state  which  is  evoked  in  the  subject.  From  what  has  just  been 
said,  this  state  of  the  subject  depends  upon  the  nature  of  the 
object  which  produced  it.  Were  the  object  different,  then  this 
state  w^ould  be  different ;  if  the  object  changes,  then  this  state 
changes.  This  is  so  obvious  that  it  does  not  need  further  discus- 
sion. Not  only,  however,  does  the  state  of  the  subject  depend 
on  the  nature  of  the  object,  and  change  when  the  latter  changes  ; 
but  just  as  truly  does  this  state  depend  upon  the  nature  of  the 
subject  in  which  this  state  occurs.  If  this  subject  were  different 
in  any  way  from  what  it  is,  then  the  effect  of  the  object  on  it 
would  be  different.  This  all  follows  necessarily  from  the  notion 
of  interaction  which  Lotze  has  given. 

Both  of  these  truths,  however,  have  been  overlooked.  yOn 
the  one  hand,  the  nature  of  the  subject  is  left  out  of  account,  and 
knowledge  is  explained  in  terms  of  the  object  alone.  The  classi- 
cal representative  of  this  school  of  thought  is  Locke.  Locke 
regards  the  subject  as  a  tabula  rasa,  which  simply  receives  the 
impressions  which  the  object  produces  on  it.  According  to  this 
doctrine  the  state  a  in  the  object  A  seems  to  migrate  into  the 
subject,  and  is  there  in  the  form  of  a  copy  or  image  of  a.  In 
criticism  of  this  theory,  however,  Lotze  declares  that,  "  Every  . 
assumption,  to  begin  with,  is  wholly  inadmissible,  which  places 
the  origin  of  our  knowledge  exclusively  in  the  object ;  a  very 
little  attention  will  discover  to  us  that  even  in  the  'tabula  rasa,' 
to  which  the  receptive  soul  has  been  compared,  or  in  the  wax, 
which  it  has  been  supposed  to  resemble  in  being  a  mere  recipient 
of  impressions,  a  spontaneous  reaction  of  the  recipient  subject  is 


/" 


I02  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

indispensable.  Only  because  the  tablet,  by  virtue  of  certain 
modes  of  operation  peculiar  to  its  nature  and  consistence,  retains 
the  colored  points  and  prevents  them  running  into  each  other, 
only  because  the  wax,  with  its  cohesive  elements,  presents  the 
properties  of  an  unelastic  body  readily  receptive  of  the  stamp  and 
capable  of  regaining  it — only  by  virtue  of  this  peculiar  nature  of 
^ichei^'S'.arf  the  tablet  and  the  wax  adapted  to  receive  the  colors  of 

ithe.^tamp  m^ressed  upon  them."  ^  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  \y^ 
the  nature  of  the  subject  must  be  regarded  in  every  case  of  in- 
teraction. A  contrary  notion,  just  the  reverse  of  the  conception 
of  a  tabula  rasa,  leaves  out  of  consideration  the  nature  of  the  y^r 
object,  and  endeavors  to  account  for  the  states  or  phenomena  in 
the  subject  by  means  of  the  subject  alone.  *^ichte  may  be  taken 
as  the  representative  of  this  point  of  view.  On  this  theory  the 
theoretical  process  begins  with  a  free  act  of  self-limitation.  This 
free  act  being  the  first  is  groundless  and,  therefore,  unconscious. 
This  unconscious  self-limitation  of  the  subject  is  the  world-pro- 
ducing activity  of  reason,  or  the  productive  imagination  ;  and  this 
groundless  free  act  is  sensation.  This  is  only  one  of  many  at- 
tempts which  absolute  idealism  has  made  to  explain  the  effect  of 
the  object  upon  the  subject.  How  satisfactory  these  efforts  have 
been  is  still  a  matter  of  dispute,  and  we  are  not  now  required  to 
settle  this  point. 

From  the  above  discussion,  however,  we  are  able  to  understand 
what  is  the  nature  of  Lotze's  theory  of  knowledge.  When  subject 
and  object  interact,  states  are  produced  in  the  former.  But  the 
state  of  a  subject  is  a  state  of  consciousness,  or  an  idea.  Ideas, 
therefore,  are  aroused  in  the  subject  by  the  causal  activity  of  the 

■/object  upon  it.  But  it  has  been  shown  (chapter  II)  that  ideas  are 
knowledge  of  an  object  ;  therefore  knowledge  of  an  object  arises 
in  a  knowing  subject  by  means  of  the  causal  activity  of  the  ob- 
ject. In  regard  to  this  question,  Lotze  maintains  the  point  of 
view  we  have  endeavored  to  outline  :  "  Now  our  ideas  are  ex- 
cited in  the  first  instance  by  external  influences,  and  this  leads  us 
to  regard  thought  as  a  reaction  of  the  mind  upon  the  material 
supplied  by  those  influences  and  by  the  results  of  their  interac- 

'^Logik,  \  326.  ^Ibid.,  Introd.,    |  III. 


REALITY  AND   KNOWLEDGE.  I03 

tion  already  referred  to."^  "All  our  information  as  to  an  exter- 
nal world  depends  upon  ideas  which  arc  only  changing  conditions 
of  ourselves.  .  .  .  Our  ideas  arise  from  action  and  reaction 
with  a  world  independent  of  ourselves.  .  .  .  Whenever  action 
and  reaction  takes  place — and  cognition  is  only  the  particular 
case  of  such  action  between  things  and  the  ideating  mind — the 
nature  of  the  one  element  is  never  transformed,  identical  and  un- 
changed, to  the  other  ;  but  that  first  element  is  but  as  an  occa- 
sion which  causes  the  second  to  realize  one  single  definite  state 
out  of  the  many  possible  for  it — that  state,  namely,  which  ac- 
cording to  the  general  laws  of  the  nature  of  that  second  element 
is  the  fitting  response  to  the  kind  and  magnitude  of  stimulus 
which  it  has  received.  Hence  definite  images  in  us,  and  pro- 
duced by  us,  correspond  to  the  causes  which  act  upon  us  ;  and  to 
the  change  of  those  causes  there  corresponds  a  change  of  those 
inner  states  of  ours.  But  no  single  idea  is  a  copy  of  the  cause 
which  produces  it."^  ^^Everything,  then,  which  acts  upon  the 
mind  produces  a  state  of  consciousness,  or  an  idea  in  the  mind, 
just  in  the  same  way  as  the  sun  produces  a  state  of  what  we  call 
warmth  in  a  stone.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  in 
using  any  such  illustration  as  that  of  the  sun  warming  a  stone,  a 
distinction  must  be  drawn.  In  the  case  of  the  sun  and  a  stone 
we  regard  both  as  objects  ;  whereas  in  the  case  of  a  tree  and  my 
own  consciousness,  we  regard  the  tree  as  an  object,  and  the  mind 
as  a  subject.  In  the  former  example  sun  and  stone  are  sun  and 
stone  as  knaivn  to  the  observer,  and  the  stone  is  not  perceived 
from  its  ozvn  poi?it  of  view.  But  in  the  case  of  the  tree  and  con- 
sciousness, consciousness  is  considered  from  its  own  point  of 
view.  Now  what  is  true  of  the  relation  of  the  sun  and  a  stone  is 
true,  so  far  as  a  subject  independent  of  both  can  know,  of  the  re- 
lation of  a  tree  and  any  person  whom  I  may  be  conscious  of.  So 
far  as  actual  direct  knowledge  goes,  persons  are  as  much  objects 
in  my  consciousness  as  the  so-called  things  are.  The  discrep- 
ancy arises  through  a  confusion  of  the  aspects  of  a  thing.  But, 
as  we  have  seen,  everything  is  both  object  and  subject.  Con- 
sequently, when  regarded  as  an  object  it  appears  differently  than 
it  would  if  taken  as  a  subject.     But  these  are  only  partial  views 

lyl/zV&r.,  II,  347-8. 


104  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

of  its  nature  and  of  its  relations,  and  we  cannot  therefore  rightly- 
pass  from  one  point  of  survey  to  the  other  without  allowing  for 
the  new  circumstances,  or  the  changed  aspect. 

Because  a  self  or  thing  is  both  an  object  and  a  subject,  these 
two  aspects  are  not  identical.  It  is  sometimes  maintained  that 
the  relation  of  subject  and  object  is  simply  a  mechanical 
connection  such  as  is  found  between  object  and  object.  Things, 
according  to  this  view,  are  spatially  joined  or  related,  and  the  re- 
lation of  subject  and  object  is  claimed  to  be  just  a  particular  case 
of  this  principle.  The  principle  of  explanation,  on  this  theory, 
purports  to  be  derived  from  the  relation  of  objects  as  objects,  and 
it  is  this  principle,  so  it  is  said,  which  is  extended  to  explain  the 
relation  of  mind  and  its  object.  But  this  is  an  instance  where  the 
attempt  is  made  to  explain  the  partially  known  by  the  less  known. 
If,  indeed,  this  were  Lotze's  theory ;  if  he  regarded  the  relation 
between  objects — I  mean  the  relation  as  it  appears  to  us — as 
the  primary  and  fundamental  relation,  and  if  he  explained  the  re- 
lation of  subject  and  object  by  this  relation  derived  from  what 
seems  to  be  an  alien  source,  he  could  be  justly  charged  with  ma- 
terialism, or  with  attempting  to  explain  mind  in  terms  of  matter, 
and  on  principles  of  bare  mechanism.  Lotze,  however,  does 
not  do  this.  He  does  not  apply  a  notion  derived  from  things 
as  objects,  i.  c,  as  known  in  spatial  forms,  to  real  things.  In 
other  words,  he  does  not  interpret  the  relation  of  mind  to  its 
object  by  means  of  categories  derived  from  the  spatial  aspect  of 
things.  He  does  not  explain  the  higher  categories  in  terms  of 
the  lower,  but  the  lower  in  terms  of  the  higher.  Lotze's  inter- 
pretations of  reality  are  anthropomorphic.  He  derives  his  cate- 
gories from  the  self,  and  not  from  things  as  selfless.  By  this 
method,  moreover,  he  does  not  degrade  the  self,  but  things  are 
raised  to  the  level  of  selves.  For  Lotze,  therefore,  the  relations 
in  which  things  stand  are  more  than  what  is  ordinarily  under- 
stood by  the  term  relation.  Things  are  selves,  and  their  mode 
of  relation  is  interaction.  Consciousness  is  not  explained  in 
terms  of  selfless  things,  but  things  are  explained  by  means 
of  mind,  and  become  selves.  To  be  sure,  it  may  still  be  de- 
manded   why  Lotze    holds    that  "the    operation    of  objects  of 


REALITY  AND    KNOWLEDGE.  105 

knowledge  upon  a  subject  apprehending  them  come^  under  this 
general  principle"  of  interaction.  The  answer  to  this  objection 
is  that  interaction  never  takes  place  between  mere  objects.  Inter- 
action is  a  function  of  selves.  Lotze  does  not  say  that  there  is  a 
wider  kind  of  interaction  than  that  between  subjects  and  objects. 
According  to  his  theory,  all  interaction  is  an  activity  in  which 
nothing  but  selves  take  part.  And  since  each  self  is  either  a  sub- 
ject or  an  object  according  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  we  re- 
gard it,  it  is  one  and  the  same  whether  we  affirm  that  objects  inter- 
act, subjects  interact,  or  that  interaction  is  a  function  of  objects 
and  subjects.  If  we  regard  one  self  as  knowing  another,  then  this 
knowing  self  is  taken  as  subject,  and  the  known  self  as  object. 
But  they  differ  only  in  point  of  regard.  If,  therefore,  interaction 
is  considered  as  a  functional  relation  of  things,  and  if  the  relation 
of  subject  and  object  is  looked  upon  as  a  case  of  this  general 
principle,  the  charge  cannot  justly  be  made  that  Lotze  is  explain- 
ing cognition  by  a  form  of  union  which  obtains  only  in  the 
material  world.  Plainly  there  is  no  interaction  of  real  things 
which  are  less  than  selves.  To  say  then  that  the  relation  of  sub- 
ject and  object  is  a  case  of  the  principle  of  interaction  in  which 
things  stand,  is  quite  consistent,  and,  further,  it  is  what  we  would 
expect.  Lotze's  meaning  comes  out  in  the  following  passage  : 
"  The  first  thing  we  have  to  do  is  to  endeavor  to  establish  what 
meaning  it  is  possible  for  us  to  attach  to  knowledge  in  its  widest 
sense,  and  what  sort  of  relation  we  can  conceive  to  subsist  between 
the  subject  which  knows  and  the  object  of  its  knowledge,  con- 
sistent with  those  yet  more  general  notions  which  determine  the 
mode  in  which  we  have  to  conceive  the  operation  of  anything 
whatever  upon  anything  else.  What  we  have  to  do  is  to  obtain 
the  last  mentioned  conception,  which  amounts  to  a  metaphysical 
doctrine,  and  treat  the  relation  of  subject  and  object  as  subordinate 
to  it,"  ^  Thus  we  discover  the  nature  of  Lotze's  problem,  and 
this  knowledge  of  his  aim  makes  clear  what  he  means  by  subor- 
dinating the  relation  of  subject  and  object  to  the  general  principle 
of  the  relation  of  things.  For  the  purpose  of  making  plain  his 
meaning  let  us  examine  closely  this  quotation.     This  seems  nec- 

1  Logik,  \  322. 


Io6  LOTZE'S    THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

essary  on  account  of  an  attack  made  upon  Lotze  at  this  point.  ^ 
Now,  the  aim  is  to  understand  the  relation  between  subject  and 
object.  That  the  one  acts  upon  the  other  Lotze' s  never  doubts. 
He  assumes  this  as  necessary,  for  without  this  assumption  ex- 
perience is  left  unexplained.  ^  How  can  subject  and  object  be 
related?  Lotze  could  have  begun  with  this  problem,  and  when 
it  was  solved  he  might  have  gone  on  to  discuss  the  relation  of 
objects  to  one  another.  But  he  did  not  choose  to  do  this,  and  he 
gives  his  reasons  for  not  doing  so.  ^  He  prefers  to  begin  with 
things,  and  discover  the  mode  of  their  relation.  This  enquiry,  as 
has  been  seen,  led  him  to  conclude  that  things  are  selves,  and  that 
interaction  is  the  only  intelligible  mode  of  relation  between  them. 
So  long,  then,  as  anything  exists  and  is  related  to  any  other 
thing,  all  these  things  are  selves,  and  are  in  interaction.  With  this 
theory  of  reality  Lotze  comes  to  the  solution  of  a  logical  problem. 
That  one  self  can  know  another  is  evidence  that  these  two  selves 
— or  if  preferred,  subject  and  object — causally  affect  each  other, 
and  therefore  exist  in  some  kind  of  union.  How  can  this  union, 
or  influence  of  one  upon  the  other,  be  understood  ?  Clearly, 
Lotze  maintains,  this  causal  relation  is  just  a  case  of  interaction. 
The  argument,  therefore  is  :  All  things  are  in  interaction  ;  sub-  y 
ject  and  object  are  things,  Ergo,  etc.  Li  this  sense  then  the  rela- 
tion of  subject  and  object  is  a  case  of  the  relation  of  all  real  things, 
and  is  subordinated  to  this  general  principle.  The  phrase  "  those 
yet  more  general  notions"  need  cause  no  trouble.  It  means  that 
interaction  obtains  not  only  between  things  regarded  as  subjects, 
and  things  regarded  as  objects,  but  is  the  mode  of  all  things  that 
exist.  But  all  things  are  after  all  selves,  so  this  principle  has  the 
same  connotation  whether  it  is  regarded  as  the  function  of  things 
or  of  things  and  a  self. 

These  states  of  consciousness  produced  by  the  interaction  of 
subjects  and  objects  are  ideas.  But  we  have  seen  that  an  idea  is 
a  bit  of  knowledge  of  reality.  The  nature  of  an  idea  is  cognitive. 
By  means  of  it  the  subject  is  conscious  of  an  object.  We  know 
reality  in  ideas,  and  it  can  be  known  in  no  other  way.     In  mak- 

iCf.  Eastwood:   op.  cit.,  Mind,   1892,  p.  478. 
•^Logik,  I  328;  Cf.  also  \\  322-333. 
^Met.,  Introd.,  H  VII-IX. 


REALITY  AND   KXOWLEDGE.  I07 

ing  this  statement,  idea  may  be  used  in  the  broadest  possible 
sense,  and  it  remains  true  that  only  in  idea  can  reality  be  known. 
If  we  use  idea  to  connote  any  form  of  mental  construction — let 
it  be  faith,  feeling,  will,  or  thought — which  reacts  to  the  influence 
of  the  object  (and  Lotze  regards  all  these  functions  as  mental 
constructions  '),  it  is  obvious  that  reality  can  be  known  only  in 
idea  or  a  mental  construction.  To  know  in  idea  is  simply  to 
know.  As  Lotze  has  shown,  knowing  is  not  and  never  can  be 
a  mirroring  of  reality.  Ideas  are  not  copies  of  things,  nor  are 
sensations  copies  of  things.  Again,  knowledge  is  not  that  of 
which  it  is  knowledge.  Knowledge  arises  in  the  mind  when  ob- 
jects causally  move  the  mind  to  perceive  and  think  them,  for  our 
ideas  are  our  knowledge  of  reality.  Once  we  have  an  idea  we 
possess  knowledge  of  reality.^ 

The  conclusion  may  be  stated  thus :  When  an  object  acts 
upon  a  subject  it  produces  an  activity  in  this  subject.  Now  this 
subject  is  a  knowing  being.  Consequently  the  subject  knows 
either  the  activity  or  the  object.  If  the  activity,  the  object  is 
unknowable,  but  if  the  object,  then  reality  is  known.  How  the 
subject  knows  at  all  is  an  unsolved  problem.  But  it  is  no  more 
an  enigma  that  the  subject  should  know  reality  than  that  it  should 
know  an  activity  of  itself  In  other  words,  it  is  just  as  easy,  so 
far  as  we  can  comprehend,  for  reality  to  be  known  as  for  an 
activity  of  the  self  to  be  known.  In  fact  the  former  sentiment 
appears  to  be  the  more  intelligible.  The  mind  is  a  knowing  ac- 
tivity, and  an  idea  is  a  process  or  form  of  this  activity.  A  state 
of  consciousness  is  not  a  thing  to  be  known,  but,  on  the  other 

^  Mikr.,  II,  p.  662. 

2  This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  fairest  interpretation  to  put  upon  Lotze' s  theory  of 
knowledge  ;  for  it  is  a  conception  which  seems  to  run  through  his  writings.  More- 
over, this  interpretation  seems  more  consistent  with  the  general  spirit  of  his  philosophy. 
Nevertheless,  the  candid  reader  must  admit  that  there  are  many  passages  which 
appear  to  conflict  with  this  exposition,  and  with  which  it  is  difficult  to  harmonize 
them.  These  conflicts,  however,  may  be  only  apparent,  due  largely  to  his  form 
of  statement.  Lotze  is  not  always  careful  of  his  terminology;  e.  g.,  'Relation'  is  a 
term  which  he  insists  belongs  only  to  knowledge,  and  is  not  adequate  to  denote  the 
unity  of  things.  Notwithstanding,  however,  this  definition  of  the  term,  he  uses  it  to 
denote  interaction  [Logik,  §322).  A  good  deal  of  confusion  in  Lotze' s  philosophy, 
it  seems  to  me,  can  be  traced  to  this  inexact  use  of  terms.  [In  this  connection 
the  reader  should  compare  the  author's  treatment  in  an  earlier  article  entitled  "  Mod- 
ern Theories  of  Judgment,"   Phil.  Rev.,  Vol.  XII,  pp.  595ff.     Editor.] 


^ 


Io8  LOTZE'S   THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

hand,  it  is  rather  the  particular  cognitive  activity  of  the  self  in 
which  the  self  knows  a  particular  object.  Thus  it  would  seem 
that  an  idea  is  simply  a  cognitive  activity  in  which  an  object  is 
known.  It  may,  therefore,  be  concluded  that  when  an  idea  or 
state  of  consciousness  is  produced  in  a  self  by  means  of  the  ac-  y 
tivity  of  another  self  or  object,  this  idea  so  produced  is  knowledge 
of  that  other  self  or  object. 


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